RPF0665-Friday

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00:00:14.720 | Today on Radical Personal Finance it's live Q&A.

00:00:17.840 | [Music]

00:00:34.080 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,

00:00:36.960 | skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now,

00:00:41.200 | while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less. My name is Joshua, I am your host,

00:00:46.080 | and today we do a live Q&A show. I've got one caller sitting on the line right now,

00:00:49.920 | and I've got several questions, written questions, that we'll get to as well.

00:00:52.560 | Assuming that there is time, we'll get to some questions from patrons of the show.

00:00:56.640 | Buckle your seatbelts, these are fun.

00:00:59.040 | [Music]

00:01:06.240 | These call-in shows work just like call-in talk radio, so I open them up to patrons of the show.

00:01:10.320 | If you'd like to become a patron of the show, you can do that at radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron.

00:01:14.240 | Open up a phone line, anybody who calls in can chat with me about anything that they want to

00:01:18.640 | chat with me about. That's how these work. So we begin today with Andy in Indiana. Andy,

00:01:23.760 | welcome to the show. How can I serve you today, sir?

00:01:25.360 | Hi Joshua, thanks for taking my call. I wanted to ask you about budgeting and how you're using YNAB.

00:01:33.040 | I've heard you mention having like, what seems to me like would be a lot of categories in YNAB,

00:01:40.160 | and I was I guess curious if you budget a little bit of money in every category,

00:01:44.080 | if what you do with it you'd consider true budgeting or more expense tracking, or

00:01:48.400 | how you're using that. I feel like I'm just tracking with it, and just curious.

00:01:54.560 | Yeah, it's a good question. So my relationship with YNAB is, I use it, I still use it. I've

00:02:00.000 | been using it for a few years. I am using the previous version of YNAB. It's one of the reasons

00:02:06.400 | why I still recommend them. I think their online stuff is great. But for me, I don't care to have

00:02:12.160 | my personal data stored on somebody else's servers. And so when they went to their software

00:02:18.320 | as a service model, which is I think a good business move for them, and for the vast majority

00:02:23.760 | of people, I think the right move, or as far as the right direction for people to go, but

00:02:30.480 | meaning companies to go, then, but I stopped using their, I don't use the newest version,

00:02:36.080 | that's all I'm saying. I use the previous version, which is stored on my desktop. That way,

00:02:41.280 | I can do a little bit better job of keeping track of my financial data. Basically, I've come to the

00:02:46.560 | conclusion that if you store data online, you can expect in the fullness of time that all data that

00:02:54.000 | you give anybody online is going to be hacked. And so that's one of the reasons why I've stopped

00:03:00.480 | putting any of my data into any kind of central repository. I no longer use, I don't use personal

00:03:06.640 | capital, I don't use Mint, I don't use any of the online YNAB service or any other services,

00:03:13.280 | because now I'm exposing my data to the potential of having all of my data breached, which I would

00:03:19.600 | prefer not to do. Now, the chances of that are, I don't know, I think they're high, but I know that

00:03:27.360 | YNAB and all the other providers do a good job of trying to seek to secure the data. But basically,

00:03:33.520 | it seems to me that you'd have to be crazy to think that data can be secured. When you've got

00:03:37.760 | the US government, when you have the US government that loses all the data, the top secret data of

00:03:43.520 | everyone in the Department of Defense, and when you've got Experian and Equifax losing all their

00:03:48.480 | data, and it just seems to me foolish at this point to store data online if it doesn't need to

00:03:54.320 | be. So that's one interesting different thing about how I use YNAB. I use the previous version

00:03:59.440 | of the software that I originally paid for when you could buy the actual software, and I have no

00:04:03.520 | problem with it. Another weird thing I do is I don't actually use the automatic functionality

00:04:09.200 | of downloading transactions. So I'm weird again, and I spend more time than a lot of people. I

00:04:16.000 | think that for the majority of people, I think the automatic importing, the automatic categorization

00:04:21.360 | is probably the right move. But I like to take a little bit of time with my data, and I like to

00:04:26.000 | make sure that I'm really paying attention to it, and that I'm really conscious of what's happening.

00:04:32.240 | And so I manually enter all the transactions in. I manually categorize them, and I try to think

00:04:39.040 | about the transactions when I'm putting them in. So that's another weird thing that I do that is

00:04:45.120 | probably not the common thing. So I put all my transactions into YNAB. I keep two different

00:04:55.040 | YNAB budgets. I keep one budget for my business, and I keep one budget for my personal life,

00:05:01.040 | and I keep those separate. YNAB is certainly not as powerful as proper business budgeting software,

00:05:09.360 | and I think that most people who are running an actual business should go ahead and use QuickBooks.

00:05:13.920 | I use or another accounting double entry, you know, just good accounting software as well,

00:05:20.240 | which I do use that some as well. But I've found that YNAB is just so simple, and I try to keep my

00:05:26.240 | affairs fairly simple, and so it works out well for that. In terms of budgeting, I do have some

00:05:34.800 | weird accounts. I've covered that in past shows, and I try to think about budgeting not in a kind

00:05:40.640 | of a strict sense, but more as trying to understand how my, you know, whether I should maximize a

00:05:49.520 | transaction or minimize a transaction. So that's why I use some of the weird categories that I use,

00:05:54.560 | and I try to use transactions that are going to help me with the data that I need. So back to,

00:05:58.880 | you know, the bane of my existence has always been my family's food budget,

00:06:04.720 | and if I just have a budget, that's the biggest, single biggest discretionary expense in our

00:06:10.240 | in our budget that's not preset. And so in trying to improve that, there's a real balance here,

00:06:16.160 | because do I want to spend money on food, or do I want to spend money on, you know,

00:06:20.880 | medical care in the future? It seems like I've heard people say in the past, I can't cite it,

00:06:25.920 | I went looking for data to try to find it. But I heard people say that, you know, in the past,

00:06:29.680 | people spent significant, let's just make up some numbers, 30% of their budget on food and 5% of

00:06:35.440 | their budget on healthcare expenses. But today, we spent 30% of our budgets on healthcare expenses,

00:06:40.000 | and 5% on food. And so basically, you pick it, do you want to spend your money on food? Or do you

00:06:43.760 | want to spend your money at on healthcare? Now, I could never go through and find the actual data

00:06:48.800 | sources to verify that. But I thought, you know what, probably directionally, that's probably

00:06:52.400 | true. And so it doesn't make sense for me to try to be super frugal when it comes to food. But I

00:06:57.840 | also recognize that this is a big category. So for the last couple of years, I've actually tracked

00:07:02.720 | all of our food expenses by category. And I tried to see because I've always had this impression

00:07:09.040 | that what we do, we pretty well, we're pretty carefully. But I broke it down and I keep it in,

00:07:14.800 | you know, I have a subcategory of groceries, meat, grains, I'd separate grains from bread.

00:07:22.720 | So meat, grains, bread, fruits and vegetables, non-categorized expenses, sweets, etc. So that

00:07:28.800 | gives me an idea of how much of our budget is actually going to different categories. Again,

00:07:33.280 | that's a weird thing that I think majority of people don't do. But the way I look at it is,

00:07:38.800 | I need the data to get an understanding of what's actually happening. The first,

00:07:42.560 | if you're going to make a good decision, the first thing you need is good data. And so I want my data,

00:07:46.880 | not just the average person's data, so that I can have a sense of how much of our money is going to

00:07:52.400 | things that are really good versus things that are junk. And then that helps me if I'm shopping

00:08:00.240 | at Costco, and it helps me to pull out food from other expenses, etc. and have a good sense of

00:08:04.880 | that. So I keep detailed categories on the things that I care about. And then I segment the budget

00:08:11.520 | based upon whether it's a category that I want to spend a lot of money on, whether it's a category

00:08:21.760 | that I want to spend just what's necessary, or whether it's a category that I want to minimize.

00:08:26.800 | And I try to keep my in my budget listings categories, I order them in that order.

00:08:31.520 | So when I'm looking at the numbers of expenses for things that I want to spend a lot on,

00:08:35.920 | all right, I've got it. When I'm looking at things that I'm going to set aside a

00:08:38.880 | pre established percentage, I have that in the middle. And then down below, I have that

00:08:43.040 | the other ones. With regard to budgeting, I do some budgeting. YNAB is brilliant because it makes

00:08:48.960 | it so doable to budget the money that's in your checking account. But given my geographic

00:08:57.920 | instability over the past couple of years, it's very hard for me to make the numbers work

00:09:04.160 | in advance. So what I do is I just simply spend cash and my budget is basically here's how much

00:09:10.560 | spending money I have. And I've allocated this to spending money, I put the money in my wallet.

00:09:16.080 | And then I look to see how much money is in the wallet. And when the money's gone,

00:09:18.880 | well, I go on to something else. So that's been a helpful way of just managing my spending.

00:09:24.320 | And I only have a handful of spending categories, which are largely things like food,

00:09:29.680 | that are not predetermined. So what I do is at the beginning of the month, I go ahead and fill

00:09:36.160 | in the budget categories with round numbers. And then I kind of skip out on all the little stuff,

00:09:42.000 | all those little discretionary ones. I take X amount of dollars out of the ATM,

00:09:45.680 | and I just spend cash. And that's how I keep myself on track. So I guess that's largely,

00:09:52.160 | to answer your question, that's probably the best I got. Those are some weird things that I do.

00:09:55.680 | I don't think I recommend those for most people. I think they work for me. I do it,

00:10:00.720 | but I don't really recommend it for most people. I guess one other weird thing I do that most

00:10:05.040 | people might not think of is I change every, it's been about every year or two, I make a new budget.

00:10:11.520 | And I do that so that I can rejigger all the categories. Because I don't think of categories

00:10:17.440 | just as artificial. So I don't want the standard categories. And again, I don't recommend this for

00:10:22.240 | necessarily new personal finance novices. But I don't want just the standard categories. I want

00:10:28.800 | categories that actually help me. So every couple of years, I delete the budget. I start completely

00:10:34.880 | fresh with totally new data. And I use that as an opportunity to totally redo my categories.

00:10:40.240 | So on the business side, that's useful because all of my categories that I've used in YNAB

00:10:46.560 | all fit, line up exactly with Schedule C. So everything is categorized according to the

00:10:51.200 | Schedule C categories so that at the end of the year, if I have a budget in YNAB that corresponds

00:10:56.080 | to a business, boom, it's all lined up and all previously categorized with a Schedule C.

00:11:00.880 | On the personal side, I look at it and say, what are my goals and my spending goals? And as I said,

00:11:06.960 | I categorize it based upon what I'm actually trying to accomplish. And so those are my answers.

00:11:11.600 | Andy, how do you use YNAB? I think I am using the online version with auto import.

00:11:19.520 | I think I kind of use it similar way to what you do because I've found I've not had to use it to

00:11:27.520 | dig out from under anything. I've been over the 30 days of money. It's about the 31st day that I was

00:11:34.400 | using it. And so I end up, kind of like you said, generally allocating at the beginning of the month.

00:11:42.000 | But then there's a lot of, well, I have this immediate budget and I have an education budget

00:11:49.120 | and I put my 20 bucks in both, but then I spent 40 in one and nothing in the other for this month.

00:11:54.480 | So I just move that money around. I guess it seems to me like I use it more as a

00:12:02.480 | tracking tool and don't really do much budgeting. And it sounds like you do kind of the same and

00:12:08.960 | you actually do your budgeting by just giving yourself cash to spend.

00:12:12.640 | So a number of years ago, I recorded an episode of the show where I talked about philosophies of

00:12:19.120 | budgeting. I'm convinced of this. You don't need to use the same budgeting approach at all stages

00:12:28.080 | of your financial life. So if somebody is just getting started with money and they're totally

00:12:35.680 | broke, I think tracking every single dollar helps. And doing it to the penny is really,

00:12:41.520 | really valuable because you're building a skill. Most people who get in trouble with money usually

00:12:45.600 | get there because they're not paying attention to money. So by practicing the skill of very

00:12:51.520 | focused budgeting, then they're working their way in building something that they need to build.

00:12:57.680 | So once you've built that basic skill, however, then I think you can grow on. And that's where

00:13:03.600 | for you doing some tracking, I don't see any reason why. If your budget is comfortable,

00:13:08.160 | if you have a general sense of what you're spending, you could within an hour reproduce

00:13:13.760 | basically pretty close data on what you're spending. I don't see why you need to spend

00:13:18.400 | hours and hours doing all of the intricate planning. And if you have enough money and

00:13:26.320 | if you're automatically paying yourself first and have automated savings and investing happening up

00:13:30.880 | front, I don't see why you should have to take the time and put it into all of that tracking.

00:13:39.680 | Unless you enjoy it. Like for me, it's my hobby. I enjoy it. I think it's fun. It gives me fodder

00:13:44.720 | for my show. I enjoy trying different things. For me, it is fun to do wacky financial things and to

00:13:52.640 | see what I can do here and how I can change there. And so it's my hobby. And I acknowledge that,

00:13:59.040 | but I would never try to get somebody else to do what I do because for me, this is my hobby.

00:14:03.680 | But then as you grow, so you have the beginner stage where you really got to budget every dollar,

00:14:10.880 | then you grow to a stage where automated tracking is fine, even if you didn't use the budgeting

00:14:15.360 | feature, but you just have a generally right categorization of your money. And then I think

00:14:20.000 | from there, you can very quickly move on to kind of a wealthy person's budget where once a year,

00:14:26.160 | you sit down and basically estimate what your expenses are. And if your household income is

00:14:32.320 | high and your expenses are low, it doesn't matter all that much in any given month,

00:14:37.280 | how things work out with a couple hundred dollars here and a couple hundred dollars there.

00:14:41.360 | So in my opinion, it's a matter of understanding where things need to be. And I would analogize

00:14:47.840 | it to say, like somebody who is trying to be an athlete, you know, you start off and somebody's

00:14:54.000 | fat and out of shape. Well, they need to do a lot of tracking because they don't know,

00:14:57.200 | they don't know their macros, right? So you do a lot of tracking, then somebody can build a habit,

00:15:01.680 | and then they don't need to track things quite so much, but they still generally need to be aware

00:15:05.920 | of what's going on. And then once somebody has reached their athletic goals, unless they're

00:15:10.160 | aiming for world class performance, there's no need for them to be tracking every little thing

00:15:14.560 | at every stage. So that's my philosophy. I don't think anybody who doesn't care should try to

00:15:19.200 | reproduce what I do. For me, it's fun. But I do think that somebody who is getting out of debt

00:15:23.600 | and who has never budgeted, man, they need to have YNAB, they need to budget every dollar in

00:15:27.440 | advance, they need to have that thing dialed in because they're making behavioral changes in their

00:15:32.240 | life. >> Andy:

00:15:36.720 | Makes sense. I can follow all that and agree, I think. >> Jared: Any other questions, Andy?

00:15:42.000 | >> Andy: Do you have any suggestions for anything that is an offline tool that's more similar?

00:15:52.720 | Basically, if you were to use YNAB as you have it, but do an auto import, because I just don't like

00:16:01.520 | copying things over, is there any other tool that does that that's not cloud-based that you know of?

00:16:07.440 | >> Jared: The problem is, so I'm not aware of any. There is Tiller, which is built on Google

00:16:14.400 | Sheets, but then again, you have all your data in Google and it's cloud-based. But that was what

00:16:18.720 | they kind of built their business on. Tiller, I think it's a great solution for people who don't

00:16:24.560 | mind their data being there. I think it's a great solution because it accomplishes the auto import

00:16:30.320 | function, but it gives you just the ability to work within spreadsheets. For me, the data entry

00:16:39.680 | is certainly an impediment for a lot of people. I guess for me, I don't have that. I try to minimize

00:16:48.240 | the number of transactions and it's just not that big of a deal to me to spend. It probably takes me

00:16:57.200 | 15 minutes a week and I enjoy it. I put on a podcast or listen to something, sit down at my

00:17:01.840 | computer, pull all the receipts out of my wallet. I keep a three by five card in my wallet and then

00:17:05.760 | so if I don't get a receipt, I just write down the amount of money that I spend. Because if I'm

00:17:10.320 | spending something, all of my, if everything is just automatically done, but if I'm spending

00:17:15.040 | something, I always spend cash and just takes a little bit of time. But beyond that, I don't have

00:17:19.120 | an answer. I think probably if YNAB were to cancel and not allow me to use their legacy version of

00:17:24.960 | the software, because I don't want to be on the cloud, I would go back to my spreadsheet solution

00:17:30.560 | and just use a local spreadsheet on my PC. I'm not a total spreadsheet wizard, but I'm good enough

00:17:37.920 | that I can program them to give me what I want out of the deal.

00:17:41.200 | Cool, makes sense. All right, thank you for calling in. Anything else before I go on to the

00:17:48.960 | written questions? I would be curious to hear about, I would agree with you on the idea that

00:17:56.560 | anything you put online is probably going to get leaked at some point and hacked. I've taken a lot

00:18:04.240 | of my life out of the mainstream computer system and followed a lot of Justin Carroll's advice on

00:18:13.120 | stuff and I've found it's made my life a whole lot harder. If I am asked to defend why I do things

00:18:19.360 | in a more difficult way, it's hard for me to articulate why that getting leaked would actually

00:18:25.600 | hurt me. I don't like the idea of someone having all my financial information, but if they have

00:18:30.240 | a million people's financial transaction, I don't have a bunch of embarrassing, I'm not running an

00:18:36.880 | anti-pornography campaign and also buying porn and having a porn budget. How would you defend that

00:18:44.480 | as being worth the extra time and hassle in general? You get a sneak peek. I have in my

00:18:51.520 | show topics that maybe I'll do someday, I have a category called, I think my working title is,

00:18:59.520 | "How Pursuit of Privacy Has Hurt Me." I'll give you just a preview for it. Yes, I would say that

00:19:09.920 | if you try to – Justin Carroll's been on the show and he's the co-author of several books on

00:19:18.000 | privacy. I've appeared on the – it's called the Privacy, Security and OSINT Show now with Justin

00:19:23.200 | Carroll and his former co-host Michael Bizzell. I did a show on financial privacy with them.

00:19:27.920 | And if you go from kind of the normal existence that most of us go where we never know anything

00:19:35.360 | about privacy and then you try to start layering on some of the hardcore privacy tactics and

00:19:40.320 | techniques that they teach, it certainly does make things more complex, more complicated.

00:19:46.960 | And I think that I've thought about this and I think there have been a number of negative

00:19:53.120 | results that I have experienced because of embracing more privacy techniques.

00:19:59.520 | Now, by personality, I'm a doer. So, I wouldn't be content with just saying, "Oh, I've learned

00:20:04.480 | about this without doing it." I like to try stuff. And for me, it's fun to say, "Okay, I'm going to

00:20:09.360 | go radical and hardcore in this direction. I'm going to see everything that I can do." And then

00:20:14.480 | I figure you can always back things off. But there have been some very significant costs to me of

00:20:21.440 | doing that. I'll give you the most significant cost. I had a Gmail account that I used from the

00:20:27.200 | time that Gmail first was created, somewhere around 2005 to 2000 and whatever, a few years ago.

00:20:33.600 | And it was a primary Gmail account that had everything arranged in it. It was my primary

00:20:40.640 | thing. Just like most of us, you have your primary Gmail account. I decided that I was not happy with

00:20:45.760 | everything that Google was doing. And I decided that I was going to take some of my data out of

00:20:50.800 | Google. I wasn't at the point where I was ready to just say, "I don't use Google," although that

00:20:54.960 | appeals to me. But I wasn't at the point where I could say that. But I was at the point where I was

00:20:59.360 | ready to say, "I'll pull some data out of Google." So, what I did was pull a lot of my personal data

00:21:05.280 | off my Google profile. I deleted my address. I deleted basically all of my information off of

00:21:10.960 | the Google profile. But I had my username and my password. And I think I had a two-factor

00:21:19.120 | authentication on the account with a hardware token. Yeah, I did. I had a two-factor authentication on

00:21:23.040 | the account with a hardware token. And so, I thought, "Well, I'm fine. I'm good to go."

00:21:28.080 | So, then one day, I decided I was just going to clear out some of my old emails. And I went

00:21:32.640 | through and I started deleting just hundreds and thousands of old emails from the archive,

00:21:37.040 | just because I didn't see any reason to keep that stuff around. I've tried to live lightly and

00:21:40.800 | decided to get rid of it. And then all of a sudden, Google kicks me out. I'm in the middle

00:21:45.760 | of deleting emails and Google kicks me out. So, then I come back and I try to log into my Gmail

00:21:51.200 | account. I thought that was weird. Try to log in. Well, I have my username. I have my password,

00:21:55.920 | which is a complex password. It's a good password. And I have my two-factor authentication key. But

00:22:00.880 | they asked me for additional security questions. The problem is that because I had removed all of

00:22:06.960 | my data from my Google profile, the only security question that the computer could ask me

00:22:16.080 | was, "When did I open this Google account?" And remember, I would have opened it sometime back

00:22:21.360 | when Google first came out, which was in 2004, I think, was their first year. And here it is,

00:22:26.880 | I think, 2017, 2018. I think it was 2017. So, I have no idea when I first opened this Google

00:22:34.720 | account. So, I start trying to give an answer and I get booted. So, then we go in and we try

00:22:40.080 | to authenticate through the google.com/recover and doesn't work, doesn't work. And the computer

00:22:45.120 | is stuck because it has no data in my profile for it to ask me security questions to let me in,

00:22:50.080 | except for when I opened the Google account. So, then I tried different dates, different months,

00:22:55.200 | and it won't let me in. And that started the most frustrating experience I have ever had with a

00:23:00.960 | company. So, first, try to figure out how do you get somebody from Gmail on the phone, because

00:23:05.360 | Google is very difficult to contact. Well, you can't get anyone from Gmail on the phone. So,

00:23:09.760 | you wind up bouncing around all the different Google places. Then I said, well, here's what I

00:23:15.440 | can do. And I had the idea to go get Google Business, because if you have a Google Business

00:23:19.840 | account, then you can access a customer service representative. So, I can't upgrade the account

00:23:26.000 | that I need help on, because I can't get into it to authenticate in. So, I upgrade another one of

00:23:30.880 | my Google accounts to a Google Business account so that I can talk to a Google employee. And

00:23:39.200 | so, I talked to them. And basically, after hours and hours and hours, I am told that there is

00:23:44.480 | nothing we can do, that there is no person at Google, no one at the company, no programmer,

00:23:49.600 | no anybody with high authorization. There's no person at Google that can override the computer.

00:23:54.560 | The only way for me to get into my Google account is to use google.com/recover to recover the

00:24:00.080 | password. And I'm stuck. And I can't even upgrade my the account in question, because I can't get

00:24:06.240 | in. And so, I wound up locked out for the last few years. I wound up locked out of my primary

00:24:12.800 | Gmail account, my primary Google account that had everything in my life associated with it.

00:24:19.760 | Anybody who emailed me, anybody, communications, personal friends, everything, every newsletter,

00:24:25.120 | everything I'm locked out of. I found that the most frustrating thing, because I have my username,

00:24:32.080 | I have my password, I have my authentication, but their computer doesn't like me. And their computer

00:24:36.880 | thinks that I'm not me. And their computer thinks it's going to be so smart, and the humans don't

00:24:40.720 | control the computers. So, that's kind of a story. It's a cautionary tale. I have learned not to mess

00:24:46.160 | around with Google accounts. And I've learned to make sure don't clear your data out of a Google

00:24:52.640 | profile. I learned the hard way. But that has been unbelievably costly to me over the last few years

00:24:59.120 | in time, in money, and in hassle to be locked out of my primary email account. And it's frankly just

00:25:05.520 | flabbergasting to me that a company would be at—we're at the point where people can't control

00:25:11.200 | computers, where the computers are in charge, and the people just are servants of the computer.

00:25:15.440 | I say, "Sorry, the computer's in charge. I can't do anything about it." And it has strengthened

00:25:20.640 | my deep antipathy for Google. If any of you guys have any help, I've searched help forums,

00:25:26.240 | I've called, I've spoken to half a dozen Google representatives. But if any of you are wizards

00:25:31.280 | of that, then you can help me out. So, that would be an example of how it's really cost me, Andy.

00:25:36.000 | But then there are other costs to privacy as well. And for me, just to sum it up the story,

00:25:42.480 | I don't have anything that I'm ashamed of. I don't have any skeletons in my closet. I've

00:25:48.000 | confessed all my sins. I don't have anybody that I've hurt or that I am hurting. There's nothing

00:25:53.200 | private. You can't even talk on a microphone and do what I do and basically keep your life private.

00:25:56.960 | But I still want to be a constant advocate for privacy as a human right and as a civil right.

00:26:06.000 | And so, for me, it's important to me to be a practitioner of privacy out of an ideological

00:26:12.800 | commitment to the cause. I do not believe that it is right, moral, ethical, in any way acceptable

00:26:21.200 | that the government of the United States says, "Well, we're just going to read every email. We're

00:26:24.640 | going to listen to every phone call. We're going to record all the metadata." And so, I have a

00:26:28.800 | choice. I can either do nothing, which for me, I'm not willing to do that. I can sit around and moan

00:26:35.360 | and gripe and complain about something that I can't change. I can't change them. Or I can take

00:26:42.080 | action and I can use the tools that are available. So, I can encrypt. I can conceal. I can remove

00:26:49.840 | data. And it's not because I'm scared of anything, although certainly I think there are very

00:26:53.680 | legitimate concerns that one could have. I don't worry about those things too much as an American.

00:26:59.920 | If I were in another country where there were much more of a predilection towards tyranny and

00:27:06.160 | violence on individuals just because of politically incorrect speech, that would be one thing.

00:27:12.160 | Although I think that's growing in the United States, especially in the kind of the public

00:27:15.680 | facing world. But for me, it's a matter of ideology. I want to support people's rights to

00:27:21.600 | privacy. You have the right to privacy in your home. You have the right to privacy in your affairs,

00:27:27.120 | in your papers, in your persons, in your effects. And because of that, I'm going to be part of the

00:27:32.400 | solution. I'm going to be part of one of those who practices private methodologies. I'm going

00:27:38.080 | to be one of those who promotes that, who teaches others to do it. Because until that happens,

00:27:43.760 | until we use the tools that we have, I don't see how things change in the better direction.

00:27:48.240 | So it's costly. It's cost me time, money, frustration. There have been things that

00:27:54.000 | have been harmed. And I don't think extreme privacy — there's Bazell's newest book — I

00:27:58.640 | don't think that extreme privacy is the right solution for everybody. But I do think that if

00:28:03.760 | more of us simply made a few of the smaller, easier changes, it would have a dramatic effect

00:28:08.720 | on our society. Thanks. I think that basically is exactly where I'm at. I was hoping you'd have

00:28:18.240 | some really encouraging thing to make me get back on the wagon and be more private than I am now.

00:28:23.520 | But I do definitely agree with the idea that it's a human right and that if you don't exercise that,

00:28:31.520 | you will lose it. And I think also just look to see where it's hurting you. For example,

00:28:37.600 | Sudo is a great app. It's a great app for phones. If I were trying to run a business where I needed

00:28:42.320 | to be connected on the phone, there's not a chance in the world I would be doing anything except

00:28:46.000 | using a standard cell phone, a standard phone. You can't reliably run a business on something

00:28:51.920 | like Sudo. Things like social media. I have decided — we will announce it on social media — but I

00:28:57.920 | have a deep level of antipathy for Facebook. I get annoyed with Twitter. But what I have decided

00:29:05.440 | recently after years of frustration and kind of wrestling with it is I care more about my primary

00:29:12.480 | mission. I care more about serving you, my listeners. And I want to make an impact on you,

00:29:19.200 | my listeners. And although I don't care for the social media companies and many of their

00:29:25.840 | practices because many of the things they do I find deeply offensive, I've decided to not be so

00:29:33.920 | ideological. I'm trying to be less, you know, principled and just focus on my primary mission

00:29:40.080 | which is to serve people and to help people to live a rich and meaningful life now while building

00:29:45.680 | a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less. So I've decided I'm going to start engaging with

00:29:50.640 | YouTube. I'm going to start creating YouTube videos. I'm going to re-engage with Facebook.

00:29:55.040 | I've not engaged with Facebook in a very long time. I'm going to engage in Twitter more because

00:30:00.960 | of my higher commitment. And I'm not trying to build a brand on privacy. I care about it,

00:30:06.160 | but I care more about impacting and helping people who need help. So I think I don't see any other

00:30:12.240 | solution other than to say if something's hurting you and it's not actually allowing you to fulfill

00:30:16.640 | your core mission and those things that are important for you, I think it would be foolish

00:30:22.560 | and illogical to do something that's harming you if you have more benefit from the alternative.

00:30:28.400 | >> Andy: Thanks. That's a really good way to put that, I think.

00:30:31.680 | >> Josh: My pleasure. Andy, thank you for calling in today. I'm going to move on to

00:30:35.520 | the written questions, but I appreciate your live call.

00:30:37.760 | >> Andy: Yes, thank you.

00:30:39.440 | >> Josh: Next question I will take was written in by a patron of the show on our Patreon page

00:30:44.400 | at radicalpersonalfinance.com. No, it doesn't even work anymore. Patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance.

00:30:49.520 | John in California writes in this, says, "Joshua, I'd appreciate your comments on this.

00:30:54.240 | How do you feel about my taking ownership of a piece of inherited property as a married man,

00:31:01.120 | as my sole and separate property? My siblings and I recently purchased a condo with inherited

00:31:07.920 | assets from my mother. We all took ownership individually without our spouses, which has

00:31:13.520 | created some hard feelings. Was this the right thing to do, as now we understand this condo

00:31:19.520 | would now go to our children rather than spouses, since they were all required to sign a quitclaim

00:31:25.120 | deed? Would we now be able to place the asset into our individual trust and leave it to our spouse,

00:31:32.080 | or does the quitclaim deed preclude that? Thank you."

00:31:35.520 | So, John, I will tackle this in the best I can. To the specifics of the situation,

00:31:42.000 | I'm not competent to address. I am not an attorney practicing in California,

00:31:48.480 | and perhaps there's some wrinkle in the California law that I don't know of.

00:31:52.080 | So, let's talk about it from a general perspective. I'll probably be about 80% right on this error,

00:31:58.720 | and then you can find some other person in your area who can point out the 20% where I'm wrong.

00:32:05.440 | First, the context, the idea of separate property versus community property. California is a

00:32:13.120 | community property state. So, of course, being a community property state, all of your property

00:32:19.360 | and your wife's property is considered to be owned equally by you. However, even in a community

00:32:25.600 | property state, there are exceptions. In a community property state, you have marital property

00:32:32.320 | and you have separate property. The thing that makes a community property state different than

00:32:36.640 | a non-community property state is that all marital property is understood to be divided,

00:32:42.000 | owned 50/50 by each spouse, even if it's only titled in one spouse's name. That's different

00:32:47.680 | than a non-community property state. Marital property is any property that is acquired

00:32:54.080 | during the marriage. So, even though you live in a community property state, you still do have

00:32:59.920 | separate property. So, for example, if you had a boat that you owned before you were married,

00:33:06.800 | that's not community property. That's your separate property, unless later after the

00:33:11.920 | marriage you title the boat into both of you and your spouse's name. And so, that's one thing.

00:33:19.200 | Now, it is very easy in a community property state to wind up accidentally having separate

00:33:24.800 | property commingled to become part of the community property. So, if you have a bank

00:33:30.000 | account and you put money from your bank account into a joint bank account and you had the money

00:33:35.360 | before marriage, it's automatically now community property. Now, an inheritance that you receive

00:33:41.120 | during marriage goes back and forth depending on the specific state. And I'm guessing the

00:33:48.080 | California law probably requires you to establish a separate transmutation agreement in order for

00:33:54.640 | you to keep the property as separate property. So, if you, generally, the way that inheritances work

00:34:01.360 | is if you inherit something from your family, it's not considered to be your wife's property,

00:34:05.840 | it wasn't marital property, it's your separate property. But, generally, you have to have it

00:34:10.960 | in an established transmutation agreement, which is basically like a post-nuptial agreement where

00:34:17.200 | each of you, you and your spouse, agree to keep your property separate and outside of the community

00:34:23.520 | estate. And if you have that knowledgeable, that consent, as you stated that you have in the

00:34:29.840 | question, you have that transmutation agreement, then you can make sure that you keep the property

00:34:35.440 | as separate property. So, the question here is why would you do this? And then we'll get to,

00:34:40.320 | was it a good idea? Why is this important? I don't see many reasons to do this outside of the concept

00:34:49.040 | of divorce. I'm trying to think if I can think of any reasons for estate planning, why this would

00:34:55.840 | be important, or for any kind of tax planning, but I don't get the sense here that we're talking about

00:35:00.560 | that much of an amount. You're talking about a condo here. It doesn't seem like we're talking

00:35:07.920 | about millions and millions of dollars. So, to me, then we could say, why did we do this?

00:35:13.360 | Again, I'm not good enough on California law to know quick claim deed. I don't see how a quick

00:35:18.800 | claim deed would come into the affair. It seemed like it's a transmutation agreement, but maybe I'm

00:35:23.440 | just ignorant. So, why should you do this? Well, the reason most people do this is to protect

00:35:31.440 | separate property, and the obvious thing that can happen is when we come into the world of divorce.

00:35:37.200 | If your mom dies, leaves you $500,000 of cash, and you use that to buy a condo,

00:35:42.240 | then, and that would be, that's the line of legal reasoning here. If you use that $500,000 of cash

00:35:49.200 | to buy a condo, then that condo would now be part of your community property. So, now, if you and

00:35:53.760 | your wife divorce, and if the judge splits your estate 50/50, now your wife has a 50% claim in

00:35:59.600 | that condo. So, what you're basically trying to do in the arrangement that you've set up is you're

00:36:04.960 | saying, I've got this 50% asset over here. I've got this asset, this $500,000 inheritance from my

00:36:11.600 | mother, and now I'm going to change this from being cash, which as long as I kept it in a

00:36:16.640 | separate account, it was clearly identified as separate property because it was an inheritance,

00:36:21.120 | but I'm going to turn it into a condo. And because we're acquiring the condo during marriage,

00:36:25.360 | if my wife doesn't sign the transmutation agreement, then we don't have the clarity

00:36:30.800 | that this is definitely my separate property. Well, I can certainly understand why that would

00:36:35.760 | create hard feelings on your wife's part, certainly. And you can imagine it too. If your

00:36:42.320 | wife had a half a million dollar inheritance, and she said, I'm going to take this inheritance and

00:36:46.800 | use it to buy something that I'm not going to put your name on, why would she be doing that?

00:36:51.120 | Well, it's going to come down largely to divorce. See, if you're talking about this as some kind of

00:36:56.560 | estate planning thing, I don't see any benefit. Unless you have a big estate and we're trying to

00:37:00.240 | deal with taxes, that would be one legitimate thing. But in that case, I would guess that

00:37:04.080 | why would there be any hardship? Why would there be any hard feelings? Because you would understand.

00:37:10.320 | But there's not going to be any tax considerations here. Your estate tax situation is basically going

00:37:14.720 | to be exactly the same, whether it's your property that you own a separate property

00:37:18.480 | versus community property. So I don't see any benefit here from an estate planning perspective.

00:37:22.480 | So we basically just come down to the possibility of divorce. How do you protect the asset in case

00:37:26.800 | of the possibility of divorce? And that's the really thorny issue. I've been asked many times,

00:37:32.720 | and I need to address it, about things like prenuptial agreements prior to marriage.

00:37:37.520 | And it's one of the most difficult decisions, difficult conversations that I can think of,

00:37:44.560 | because it's very hard to answer. On the one hand, I question why, if you are worried about the need

00:37:51.760 | for a prenuptial agreement, I question if anybody should marry. And yet, on the other hand, the

00:37:57.600 | risks of marriage, especially the financial risks, are so great that it almost seems foolish to marry

00:38:04.320 | without a prenuptial agreement. And I will at some point do the shows on prenuptial planning

00:38:09.200 | and prenuptial agreements, so you're educated on it. And I think I'm mostly against them,

00:38:14.800 | because if you have to have a prenuptial agreement, I don't think you should marry

00:38:18.560 | in the first place, and because I think they violate the spirit of marriage. But on the other

00:38:25.840 | hand, I do see that there could be a place somewhere. But I don't think you're going to

00:38:30.160 | get through them without some hard feelings, or some at least questions, and good, open,

00:38:37.360 | honest questions. Now, it's a lot easier if you do that before you're married. For example,

00:38:41.360 | I think that spouses before, or engaged persons, or at least people who are in a serious relationship

00:38:47.920 | and engaged, I think people who are in a serious relationship and engaged to one another should do

00:38:53.680 | a background check, should hire a private investigator to do a background check on the

00:38:58.080 | person that they propose to marry. But I think you also should talk about it. And it's one of

00:39:05.360 | those things where that's not a popular opinion, but I look at the, when you look at the cases,

00:39:10.640 | you look at the stories that you read, and I realize just how much could be solved with a

00:39:14.880 | simple background check by a professional investigator for many people. It seems

00:39:19.120 | short-sighted and very risky for me for someone to marry without a background check, especially,

00:39:24.640 | and my caveat would be especially if somebody is older. If you grew up in the same town as your

00:39:30.160 | fiancé, and you went to high school together, and you started dating at 17 years old, and you're 21

00:39:37.520 | years old, and you're getting married, I think it's not that important. But a lot of people are

00:39:41.040 | not in that situation. You met your spouse or your fiancé two years ago, and now you're 36 years old

00:39:46.800 | and planning to marry, I think you need to do a background check. And then when it comes to the

00:39:50.560 | assets, I think you need to talk about divorce and talk about things and say what's the situation.

00:39:56.000 | But it's a lot easier to do that before marriage versus after marriage. If you're doing this with

00:39:59.760 | your wife, basically the only financial thing that I can, any financial reason that I can see

00:40:06.560 | why you would be working very diligently to keep this as separate property would be to reserve it

00:40:12.480 | for your benefit in the case of divorce. So if I'm wrong, am I missing something, write me back

00:40:18.320 | and tell me. Tell me about some little financial thing that I'm not aware of. But the only reason

00:40:23.280 | I can see for you to have done this was because you want to make sure that your inheritance is

00:40:29.760 | not commingled into the community property that is kept as your separate property. And the only

00:40:34.320 | benefit that I can see of that is to protect you so that you can maintain the full ownership of

00:40:41.120 | that asset in case of divorce instead of losing 50%. Now, will the... So, it's a tough conversation.

00:40:48.480 | And if you're just... I don't see how I can go any farther. Now, will the condo automatically go to

00:40:55.600 | your children? Well, I would say that the asset will now pass according to your will.

00:41:01.280 | But it would be the same even if you and your spouse had community property. The place where

00:41:07.200 | I think this kind of planning makes the most sense and where it's usually the easiest is when you're

00:41:12.320 | seeking to work with blended families. Husband and wife both have married and divorced, both have

00:41:18.880 | children from their first marriage. In those situations, most of the time, once somebody has

00:41:23.840 | married and divorced, they are distinctly conscious of the fact that their marriage may end again.

00:41:28.960 | And because they have children from their first marriage, they're often seeking to protect their

00:41:33.280 | children. And those financial planning conversations are generally a lot easier to negotiate because

00:41:38.640 | it's a matter of we want to make sure that these assets go to protect our separate children. And

00:41:44.000 | we don't want to try to make my new spouse's assets go to inherit my children. And so, it

00:41:49.520 | would seem simple, simpler. Hopefully, I've given you some thought on the question. If I'm missing

00:41:54.800 | something, if I'm missing any other benefits of this, just any listener, send me an email,

00:41:59.200 | josh@radicalpersonalfinance.com. I'd love to know. But certainly, I can see why it would be a touchy

00:42:04.960 | conversation. If my wife came to me and she said to me, "I've just inherited $500,000 and I'm going

00:42:13.200 | to make sure that I'm very careful to keep it as separate property rather than for us to manage it

00:42:18.480 | and use it together," I would find that—and I'm going to do it legally with all kinds of legal

00:42:24.240 | protections—I would find that a really offensive thing. I do think that I would—like, if that were

00:42:30.800 | to happen, I do think that it's right for me to be very quiet about the direction and to let her have

00:42:42.640 | the lead in terms of the use of the money because of acknowledging that it's her family's estate,

00:42:50.560 | her side of the family. But when we married, I gave her everything and she gave me everything.

00:42:57.840 | And so to all of a sudden start on that foundation and then to introduce this concept of yours and

00:43:03.680 | mine and ours in the middle of marriage would, for me, break the fabric of the basic meaning

00:43:09.120 | of marriage. So I can understand your wife's offense. How you navigate that, though, I don't

00:43:14.400 | know. I would talk with her openly about it and work to resolve any offense that there is. Joe

00:43:21.680 | writes in with this question, "Joshua, advice that you've given me in the past about focusing

00:43:25.600 | on my economic engine has been incredibly inspiring. Right now, our economic engine is

00:43:30.560 | our ability to earn. With that, we're piling up money and working our way through some debt. We

00:43:35.120 | look forward to deploying the capital into rental properties, planning our first residential rental

00:43:38.960 | next year." Joe, attaboy. Good job. "My question today, we would like to start keeping a modest

00:43:43.760 | supply of food and water in case of emergency. Can you give some advice on how to begin prepping

00:43:50.240 | and what type and sort of food you recommend to start with? I understand a lot of freeze-dried

00:43:55.280 | food requires not only potable water, but also heat. What about the canned route? Also, do you

00:44:00.880 | have any tips on emergency medicine for beginners? Any advice or pointers to existing sources would

00:44:05.840 | be greatly appreciated. Thanks. Joseph." Well, Joe, as it just so happens, I have a podcast on

00:44:11.680 | that. So the first thing you can do is on your phone, wherever you listen to your podcast,

00:44:17.120 | whatever RSS feeder you use, scroll way, way back in the archives of Radical Personal Finance.

00:44:23.040 | You will find episode 384 is called A Sensible Approach to Food Insurance, aka Home Food Storage.

00:44:32.960 | That show is a little bit about the philosophy behind food storage, reasons for you to store

00:44:38.320 | food, etc. It was released on October 14, 2016. Then the next episode, October 14, 2016, episode

00:44:46.160 | 385, A Sensible Approach to Food Insurance, Home Food Storage, two of two, wherein I talked about

00:44:52.320 | a sensible way to actually build food storage. And following that, you will find the audio

00:44:59.840 | of a seminar called Sensible Food Storage by a lady named Wendy DeWitt. And that would be a

00:45:06.320 | good place for you to listen. Then again, you'll find audio of something in the archives there

00:45:12.480 | called, in October 14, 2016, audio of Stephen Harris's Family Emergency Preparedness Class,

00:45:19.520 | which is a family emergency preparedness class that is filled with very practical tips on basic

00:45:24.480 | emergency preparedness. And then you will find episode 381 of my show is called Simple Cheap

00:45:30.000 | Practical Tips to Help You Prepare for a Coming Hurricane, where I talk about the basic, really

00:45:35.360 | simple things to do to prepare for a hurricane, which of course is very timely as Hurricane

00:45:39.520 | Dorian threatens Florida, as I record this on August 30, 2019. So all of those shows will get

00:45:46.160 | you started in the right direction. Now, here, in answer to your question, I want to give you just a

00:45:51.760 | brief overview, though, afresh of what you can do, because I don't remember what I said in those

00:45:56.400 | shows. I would imagine that it's probably about what I think today, because I haven't changed

00:46:00.560 | much on the subjects, but I'll give you kind of a useful way to approach it. What I like to do is I

00:46:07.120 | like to think of preparedness, preparing, prepping, in terms of a phased approach based upon the

00:46:14.000 | amount of time that you need to prepare for. If you stop and think about a hurricane, or maybe

00:46:21.520 | in your case an earthquake or some kind of thing like that, you have an ideal mental picture of

00:46:28.160 | what could happen. Let's stick with a hurricane, because I'm most familiar with hurricanes over

00:46:32.160 | earthquakes, but basically the same. You get more advanced warning with a hurricane, so it's a

00:46:36.080 | benefit. If your hurricane comes through town, it blows all the trees down, knocks out the power,

00:46:42.560 | and knocks out the basic services for a week, you stop and think, "What would I need for a week

00:46:50.080 | to provide for myself and my family? What would be the basic needs?" Your needs will be different

00:46:57.600 | based upon who you are and where you're located. In Florida, we don't worry too much about

00:47:04.480 | preparing for ice storms, so backup heating is not a thing for Floridians to worry about in terms of

00:47:11.520 | prepping. We don't think about kerosene stoves and wood fireplaces and such like that. The

00:47:17.040 | coldest it ever gets can be easily solved by two blankets on top of your bed. But if you are living

00:47:23.280 | in Minnesota and you're worrying about a winter blizzard, backup heating is going to be very high

00:47:28.720 | on the list, higher than food, higher than water, because you could freeze very quickly. And if you

00:47:33.920 | don't have some sort of backup heat source or some way to trap the heat of your bodies and such so

00:47:39.040 | that you're comfortable, then you could die very quickly. And so you stop and think about your

00:47:43.920 | particular scenario, and you think about, "What would happen if I lost services?" Now, whatever

00:47:49.760 | seems the most intuitive to you to do, do that. So freeze-dried food, for most people, is not

00:47:56.960 | intuitive, unless you actively use the stuff because you go backpacking all the time. But I

00:48:02.320 | don't think it makes any sense for you to buy and store freeze-dried food until you just buy some

00:48:08.000 | extra of the stuff that you're normally accustomed to buying and owning. And if you do that, you will

00:48:14.480 | start to lay in a supply of the stuff that you usually use. If you eat canned food and you eat

00:48:21.920 | canned chicken and canned tuna, then buy canned food. Buy canned chicken and canned tuna. If you

00:48:26.960 | use saltine crackers to put your tuna fish on, then buy a couple extra boxes of saltine crackers.

00:48:32.240 | And in just one or two trips to the grocery store, you can have enough food to protect you and to

00:48:39.360 | make sure that your family can eat for a week or a couple of extra weeks. And I think for the first

00:48:44.320 | few weeks, you really shouldn't do anything different than buy your normal stuff. That's

00:48:50.320 | really it. Now, the other thing is, of course, water. Well, it's very easy for anybody to simply

00:48:57.360 | store water to get them through a week or two. What I do and what I recommend, go to Costco,

00:49:04.800 | buy a bunch of those flats of 24 packs of water bottles, individual, what are they, 24-ounce water

00:49:10.640 | bottles, 18-ounce water bottles, just the standard packs that you use if you're going to a picnic,

00:49:15.600 | and buy a whole bunch of those and stash them aside. It's water. They're $3.72 for 24 bottles.

00:49:24.000 | It winds up being, the numbers are faded for me at this point in time, but I think it's about

00:49:29.280 | five gallons of water per tray. So in general, the advice is store about a gallon per person per day.

00:49:37.120 | So if you've got a family of five and you're planning for seven days, five gallons a day

00:49:41.840 | times seven, 35 gallons of water. Well, that's pretty simple. It's only seven or eight or 10

00:49:48.480 | of those trays of water bottles. The reason I like that is because those water bottles are

00:49:54.160 | super useful. They're, of course, super useful in an emergency because they're individual servings.

00:50:01.280 | And so unlike trying to hoist a five-gallon jug up somewhere and pour water out of that,

00:50:07.600 | or go and tap a 55-gallon barrel of water, you've just got bottles of water and they're easy to

00:50:13.600 | drink. You take one out, you drink it when you're thirsty and you're done.

00:50:16.560 | They're also really multifunctional. So if your neighbor doesn't have water, you can easily share

00:50:21.440 | now. And one of the most important reasons to be prepared is so that you can help your family and

00:50:27.040 | your friends and your neighbors who are probably not going to prepare. And you need to make sure

00:50:31.680 | that you've planned ahead so that you have enough to help others who are in need. That's your

00:50:36.400 | responsibility to be a good neighbor, a good family member, to take care of those who are in need.

00:50:41.840 | And so things like that are really easy to share. It's hard to share a five-gallon jug of water.

00:50:47.520 | It's hard to share a water filter, but it's easy to share a tray of water bottles among

00:50:52.480 | people who are thirsty. The other reason I like to start with that is because it's super easy to

00:50:58.560 | use those things. After maybe a year, a couple of years sitting there, water's not going to go bad.

00:51:03.520 | It's totally fine. But you go ahead and just toss it into a cooler and take it to the beach and just

00:51:09.680 | cycle it out. It's probably unnecessary, but of course you wonder about the water and the plastic

00:51:15.680 | leaching in. You certainly don't want them to be in heat because of course water and heat and

00:51:18.640 | plastic is not good, but if they're in a cool dry place, it's fine. And so you go to Costco and you

00:51:23.920 | buy 10 trays of water and then you do it again a week later and buy 10 trays of water and you make

00:51:28.800 | a stack down in the corner of the basement, a little stack here, a little stack there, and

00:51:31.840 | you've got water. From there, you can go to something like shelter. And when they talk about

00:51:38.800 | prepping, you'll often hear prepping teachers talk about food, water, shelter, and security,

00:51:44.960 | personal security. And you can debate around what's more important and how do you approach it.

00:51:52.400 | You'll often hear people talk about the rule of threes when they teach preparedness,

00:51:56.800 | disaster preparedness, where they say you can survive for three minutes without air,

00:52:00.480 | three hours without shelter, three days without water, and three weeks without food.

00:52:06.160 | So when you think about that, it gives you a priority of where do you start. Now air and

00:52:12.240 | oxygen is certainly a little bit more unique, but it does play a role. And so that's where you make

00:52:18.720 | sure you have things like masks, dust masks, et cetera. Shelter is where, hey, if I get caught

00:52:25.360 | out in the cold or if I get caught out in the wind, et cetera, what do we do? What do we do if

00:52:28.400 | the roof gets ripped off of our house? So shelter means different things to different people.

00:52:32.240 | In the cold country, it's going to mean how do I make sure that if we don't have any source of

00:52:38.880 | heating that how do we maintain body heat? So can we build a tent in the living room? Can we put

00:52:43.920 | extra blankets around so we all sleep together on one mattress and keep ourselves warm? There's no

00:52:47.920 | need for me to go into all those details, but you start to think about that. And then of course,

00:52:51.360 | water and food line up. So what I say is start by thinking about a couple of weeks, say a week,

00:52:57.600 | two weeks without shelter. And then the next thing that you'll quickly go to would be to something

00:53:04.000 | like energy. And with energy and that show, I've talked about what I think it makes the most sense

00:53:09.040 | for people is to start with making sure that you have a battery backup system in your home.

00:53:15.680 | The teacher who is most popularized this and made it very accessible, Stephen Harris,

00:53:19.520 | who's been on the show. And he has a number of different things about that. He teaches

00:53:24.320 | and sells a course on how to set up a home battery bank. I think it makes all the sense in the world.

00:53:28.480 | Super simple. Make sure that you have a deep cycle battery or a handful of deep cycle batteries or

00:53:32.080 | golf cart batteries. You make sure that you have a battery charger to charge those. And then you

00:53:36.320 | make sure that you have an inverter to connect to those chargers. And then you also have the ability

00:53:43.520 | to pull direct 12 volt power off of that. So the last hurricane, when I was working with a friend

00:53:48.640 | who was not prepared for the hurricane, I took him to Costco and we bought food. We bought water,

00:53:54.960 | just the random packaged food that was there from Costco, jerky and nuts and whatever else is there,

00:54:00.080 | granola bars and cereal, et cetera. Bought shelf stable milk so he could drink cereal, bread, kind

00:54:06.240 | of the typical stuff that all leads out of the grocery store. Bought some water. Then I made

00:54:10.880 | sure to go and buy him a deep cycle battery. A deep cycle battery from the battery department,

00:54:15.440 | a hundred bucks, an inverter off of that battery, and then a battery charger to charge that battery.

00:54:21.600 | And so the basic concept here is how do you create and develop a source of electricity so that you

00:54:26.640 | can run your phones, so that you can run a TV, so that you can run a radio, so that you can run

00:54:31.440 | radios to communicate with people, radios to listen to radio signals, et cetera.

00:54:35.760 | Keep the kids, if your kids play video games, how do you keep video games going, things like that,

00:54:40.160 | and lights. And then what I have done and taught is to standardize everything off of 12 volt power.

00:54:46.240 | So when there's a hurricane coming through town, you put a deep cycle battery on your kitchen

00:54:50.880 | counter. You put off of that a couple of clips so that you have some USB ports so you can charge up

00:54:56.960 | all the devices that all run on USB. You have an inverter that you can use to charge up anything

00:55:02.000 | that runs off of 110 volts. And then you have battery chargers to charge up AA, AAA batteries.

00:55:09.120 | And pretty much that solves most of your needs for a week or two. Beyond that, you don't need

00:55:14.800 | much. You can run lights at night. And then you look around and think. So for example,

00:55:19.200 | if you, what I, best investment I ever bought for emergency preparedness, I was at Costco

00:55:24.480 | and they were selling these decorative candles. And the decorative candles are little LED flickering

00:55:32.080 | candles, but they run on three AA batteries. And the things run forever on AA batteries. Well,

00:55:37.920 | I have a massive supply of rechargeable AA batteries that I can recharge from everything

00:55:44.000 | that's available. And, and, and they, you, you take those, you screw them around your house,

00:55:50.800 | and now you have a source of light in all of your rooms. And those things, I did the calculations

00:55:54.560 | one time, they can run hundreds of hours on one set of AA batteries. So you can leave them on day

00:56:00.160 | and night when your shutters are up and your house is dark and everything is squared away.

00:56:03.920 | Now you can go beyond that. And you think about how do I keep my food fresh? And so that's where

00:56:08.640 | you think, how do I run my refrigerator? Well, there, the first step is of course an inverter,

00:56:12.800 | because you can use your car as a primary power source, run your engine, take an inverter on your

00:56:17.440 | battery, plug with an extension cord, your refrigerator into that, run your car for an hour,

00:56:22.320 | and it'll charge your refrigerator. Then you naturally, of course, move into the world of

00:56:26.160 | generators and say, how do I run a generator? And what kind of generator do I have? Generators

00:56:31.680 | have become very inexpensive, bunch of options there. I'll show you, share with you just a few

00:56:35.760 | of my favorite tips. And I'm trying to compress this into a 15 or 20 minute answer, but frankly,

00:56:41.840 | I probably can, I could teach a 50 hour class on this. And cause I think obsessively about it. And

00:56:48.720 | so how do I convert compress 50 hours to 15 minutes? I have no idea, but you're getting

00:56:54.480 | the best I got. So with an generator strategy, what I think makes a lot of sense is to start

00:57:00.640 | simple, start small. So a few things that you can do. Number one, start with your car as an

00:57:06.880 | inverter. It's not a great long-term solution, but it can keep your deep freezer and your refrigerator

00:57:11.920 | going for a few days until the power comes back on. Then you move to a generator and there are a

00:57:17.600 | number of different generator options. What I prefer that's the easiest, I think for most people

00:57:22.960 | is a relatively small generator that will run on dual fuel. And so what I think works really well

00:57:30.880 | is the champion dual fuel generators that come from the factory, ready to run either on gasoline

00:57:38.160 | or on propane. You can get great deals on them. Now there are other good, there are lots of good

00:57:42.640 | generators out there, but what I think you should do is if you have the money, buy an inverter

00:57:47.840 | generator. They're a lot quieter and they're more fuel efficient than the big loud ones. Of course,

00:57:53.120 | those are cheaper, but get an inverter generator because you use it in a lot more circumstances.

00:57:58.240 | My recommendation, go to a website called supergenproducts.com. And what they sell on that

00:58:03.040 | website is they sell all of the returns to Costco. And so they're a champion refurbisher,

00:58:08.320 | and you can go on there and buy a champion 2000, 3000, 4000 watt generator, but get one that runs

00:58:14.160 | on dual fuel from the factory. The reason I like dual fuel is because you can store propane and you

00:58:19.680 | can store it in a way where you don't have to cycle it. Now, I of course think everybody should

00:58:23.840 | store gasoline. So as part of prepping, you should store gasoline. You should store minimum at least

00:58:30.320 | two tanks worth of gasoline from your car. So most people should store, if your car has a fuel tank

00:58:38.480 | of 20 gallons, you should store 40 gallons of fuel. It's not hard. That's five, sorry, my math

00:58:44.640 | is broken today. That's eight little five gallon fuel containers, which anybody can store. But what

00:58:50.080 | that gives you the ability to do, if there's a hurricane coming to town and the stores are sold

00:58:54.240 | out of gasoline, then you have 20 gallons that you can use to fill up your car. And then you have

00:58:59.920 | another 20 gallons that you can take with you strapped to your roof rack or put into a little

00:59:04.000 | bumper hitch or put onto a trailer. Or if in worst case scenario, you have to put inside the car,

00:59:08.880 | better of course, and safer to keep it outside the car. But if you have to, then you can carry

00:59:14.080 | another 20 gallons with you so that you can now have basically with most vehicles, an effective

00:59:19.200 | range of 800 to a thousand miles of range. Now, just the ability to fill up your tank one time

00:59:24.720 | will get you out of range of the vast majority of things. But if you have two gas tanks worth of

00:59:31.680 | fuel, it's almost inconceivable the disaster that you couldn't get out of if you got 800 miles of

00:59:37.040 | driving range with your vehicle. I mean, we're talking super hardcore zombie apocalypse stuff,

00:59:43.520 | if you can't get out of danger with 800 miles of range. So simple suggestion is store gasoline.

00:59:49.120 | And then of course, you use gasoline for a generator. If you could only have and afford

00:59:52.960 | a cheap 2000 watt generator, but then you can go and buy eight or 10, five gallon gas cans and keep

01:00:00.000 | them full of gas. That's what you should do instead of buying an expensive generator and not store

01:00:03.920 | any gas. The biggest problem that people with generators face is they don't store gas. So the

01:00:08.800 | problem is that when you store gasoline, it has a very short shelf life. It, after a year, a couple

01:00:13.440 | of years, it starts to go bad, even with fuel treatment stabilizers in it. And so you have to

01:00:18.560 | constantly rotate gasoline. Now you may be the kind of person who's willing to do it. I am, and

01:00:23.680 | I recommend it, but many people aren't. And so the best solution I have is use propane because

01:00:28.800 | propane, you can buy propane canisters and you can set them aside and store them in a shed or

01:00:33.360 | your garage out back somewhere. Think of the fire risk, of course. So store them somewhere safely.

01:00:38.480 | The propane is stable for decades. So you can just as simply, simply systematically,

01:00:44.160 | if you have a dual fuel generator that runs on propane, you can put that aside. You can

01:00:48.960 | buy each week, you buy another just standard 20 pound barbecue cylinder. What I would do is buy

01:00:55.600 | them new, use them a little bit on your standard barbecue and then refill them so that they're

01:00:58.800 | maximally full. And you can put aside another 20 pound cylinder per week until you have as much

01:01:05.200 | propane as you feel you should have. You can also buy larger cylinders. You can buy 30 pound

01:01:09.600 | cylinders, which you can manhandle, look to a place like Tractor Supply. You can do that there

01:01:14.000 | 40 pound cylinders get pretty heavy, but they're still movable. Once you get beyond 40 pound

01:01:19.040 | cylinders, they start to not be movable. But you can then of course go to something like 100 pound

01:01:24.160 | cylinder. You can buy those from your local propane company. And there's a kind of kind of

01:01:29.120 | cylinder that they put on the back of a food truck or concession truck, or you can bury a tank in the

01:01:34.240 | backyard. And so now you move to a situation where because you can bury a propane tank from the,

01:01:39.600 | you know, few hundred gallons, even thousand gallons or whatever, it's standard throughout

01:01:43.680 | the US, you can put an above ground tank or a below ground tank. And if you create a generator

01:01:48.400 | that can run off a propane, you now create basically an inexhaustible power supply for

01:01:52.640 | yourself, which is really, really powerful. But my plans are building in in terms of finances.

01:01:57.600 | Yeah, you can go all the way to a propane or natural gas, big giant tank or multiple tanks

01:02:03.680 | and a whole house generator, but that's not strictly necessary. You can start simpler with

01:02:07.760 | the with the portable model that I'm describing to you. So get one of those. And then the other

01:02:12.240 | benefit of propane is, in my experience, you never have to worry about your carburetors becoming

01:02:16.880 | varnished like you do with gasoline. The basic problem that happens with a generator is you get

01:02:21.760 | a generator, you use it with gasoline, you use it during the storm, and then you let it sit.

01:02:26.800 | And then the gas goes bad in the tank, but worse, the carburetor gets varnished,

01:02:30.480 | because the gasoline in the carburetor just turns to lacquer. And then next time you go to start up

01:02:35.920 | the the generator, it won't start because the carburetor is broken. Now sometimes you can fix

01:02:40.960 | it, you run some seafoam through it, and you may be able to fix it. But in my experience, running a

01:02:45.280 | generator on propane, you never have any problem. So I can run my generator on propane, leave it

01:02:50.000 | sit for six months, go out, fires right up just just like it did right away, and I don't have to

01:02:54.800 | worry about the same problems. So I think propane is a really good solution for you to create and

01:02:59.680 | set up a generator. Now, moving on, and I promise we'll come back to food. Once you think about

01:03:05.600 | power, and if you're going to have a generator, you expand your options immeasurably. And then

01:03:10.000 | you can think about how do I standardize my equipment? How do I provide for myself? If,

01:03:16.480 | for example, you have an electric stove in your house, well now you don't have a way to cook if

01:03:21.520 | the electricity is out. So how are you going to cook? There are an inexhaustible number of ways

01:03:26.480 | that you could do it. You can have a solar oven, you can cook on a propane or a butane camp stove,

01:03:32.240 | you can get an induction hot plate, you can cook over an open fire in your cast iron dutch oven,

01:03:38.160 | you can get your volcano stove and cook on that, you can build a rocket stove. I mean,

01:03:43.680 | there's just no limit to the number of different ways that you can do it. But one of the basic

01:03:48.640 | recommendations I would make is if you store fuel and you have a generator, then standardize a lot

01:03:54.080 | of things on electricity. So then you think about tools. Well, standardize your tools on rechargeable

01:04:01.040 | batteries. My tips on rechargeable batteries. There are a couple interesting things that you

01:04:06.880 | can do. First, the rechargeable batteries. I'm thinking here your 18 volt or your 20 volt or

01:04:11.440 | whatever, you know, think your DeWalt screw gun type of thing. If you standardize on those,

01:04:15.920 | there are actually a lot of really interesting things that you can run on those. So you can have

01:04:19.600 | an emergency radio that runs on those. You can have lights that run on those, which can be helpful

01:04:25.520 | for your emergency preparedness. DeWalt has a system where you can use a bunch of those batteries

01:04:30.320 | and turn it into a battery pack. So you can do that. What I like the idea of is Home Depot has

01:04:36.240 | a system where if you buy the Home Depot brand, I think it's Rigid, but check me on that. I can't

01:04:41.360 | remember right now. But if you buy the Home Depot brand of tools, they have a lifetime warranty

01:04:47.360 | on the tools that they sell, including batteries. But the trick is you have to register it when you

01:04:52.800 | buy it. But I think it makes a lot of sense to standardize on something like that. Home Depot

01:04:57.760 | likely to be around for quite a while, register the tools and they will replace the batteries

01:05:02.160 | whenever they go bad. And that's usually the weak link in your tools. So, but the point is you have

01:05:08.560 | a generator, now you have the ability to charge batteries. Now you have the ability to have tools.

01:05:12.080 | So when your roof gets blown off, you have a saw that you can still use with a circular saw that

01:05:20.480 | runs off of batteries. You have the ability to use your screw guns to go and put your roof back on

01:05:24.960 | and cover up a shelter. You have the ability to get a battery operated nail gun if you need it.

01:05:29.120 | You can get battery operated chop saws and table saws. I mean, the sky's the limit. So think about

01:05:34.880 | how you create shelter for yourself. Similar things with things like emergency preparedness

01:05:40.240 | for showers. If you have a generator, one of the best things you have the ability to do is to run

01:05:45.760 | an immersion heater. And so you can get an immersion heater, put it in a bucket of water,

01:05:50.880 | warm up some cold water to warm water, and then use a little battery operated shower to dunk the

01:05:56.240 | little pump in there and turn the pump on. And now you and your family can have a shower, even if the

01:06:01.520 | power's out. And all of that is predicated based upon having electrical power. Now you can do it

01:06:06.080 | other ways. We've bathed our children tons of times in buckets or those bins, the big plastic

01:06:12.960 | bins, rubber made bins. And now the common ones are the black ones with the yellow tops.

01:06:17.680 | And that works out well. Maybe you keep aside a camp stove that runs off of propane,

01:06:22.800 | and you can heat up a big bucket of water, put it in the water, and then add some other water,

01:06:27.440 | and you can bathe in that. You can pour it over your head. So there's lots of ways to do it.

01:06:31.280 | Just think about how you would do it. Now let me circle back to food and water,

01:06:35.280 | and I hope that this is clear enough. As you start to expand, first, you think about it,

01:06:41.840 | you study it. And then as you start to expand your options, you'll probably go through different

01:06:46.480 | phases of types of foods that make sense. If you're thinking about preparing for a hurricane,

01:06:52.000 | it makes all the sense in the world for you to have canned tuna and saltine crackers in your

01:06:59.920 | pantry. It makes all the sense in the world for you to have Campbell's tomato soup or whatever,

01:07:04.560 | just the normal things that you buy that are shelf stable. But when you start to go to a longer term

01:07:11.360 | plan, where you think, "What if I had to do without power for a year? How would I do things?

01:07:18.640 | I have no refrigeration for a year. I'm going to run out of fuel for a year. How would I do it then?"

01:07:22.320 | You start to move into a different sphere. And you just have to think about, "Am I the kind of

01:07:27.760 | person who wants to save money, do it on the cheap?" In that case, you're buying wheat by the

01:07:32.240 | 50-pound bag. You are packing it yourself in a Mylar bag in a bucket with dry ice to get the

01:07:39.200 | bug out and oxygen O2 absorbers and all that. Or you can go down to Costco and buy a pallet of

01:07:45.280 | freeze-dried food. There's no right or wrong. And in fact, the freeze-dried food options that are

01:07:50.960 | available are really incredible. I would recommend looking to Meals in a Jar. One of the coolest

01:07:56.080 | things that people are doing with freeze-dried food, there was a, I think her name is Chef Tess,

01:08:00.080 | but I'm not sure about that. But she wrote a whole cookbook about Meals in a Jar. And so,

01:08:04.480 | you can use all these freeze-dried food options to be able to make whole meals that are ready to go

01:08:12.080 | in a jar just to add water. And this opens up, this is the kind of thing that you could use even

01:08:16.400 | just things like your family vacations. If you try to be frugal with your food when you go on

01:08:20.480 | family vacations, it can be frustrating and annoying because you may not have any time to

01:08:24.000 | cook, but you don't want to eat out at a restaurant. You can prepare your meals in a jar with all your

01:08:28.800 | freeze-dried food. It's totally shelf-stable. It's just sitting there. You can go for years. So,

01:08:34.560 | you can take a bunch of these with you. And then when you are ready to, when you're on the road

01:08:39.200 | and you think, "Okay, I want to have a hot lunch or a hot dinner ready when we get to our

01:08:42.160 | destination," you just simply heat up water. I've talked about that in a show I did on cooking on

01:08:46.560 | the road. Make sure that you always travel with the ability to at least heat water. Simple butane

01:08:51.360 | stove, 20 bucks at Walmart, canister of butane, works great. You can use an instant pot. Lots of

01:08:57.280 | ways that you can heat water. Immersion heater works fine too. So, but you heat up water. You

01:09:02.000 | add the boiling water to the can and make sure you put it in an insulated cooler or maybe you use a

01:09:06.400 | thermal cooker or something like that. Then leave it there. It rehydrates. It cooks the food. And

01:09:10.960 | then when you get to your destination, you've got a hot meal ready to go. It's really, really

01:09:14.880 | wonderful. Now, I can't tell you what to do. What I would say is that most people probably in time

01:09:21.760 | will put to use all these different techniques. If you're serious and committed to preparedness,

01:09:26.640 | you're going to use all of these different techniques. You can't have enough food to

01:09:31.120 | feed your neighbors by putting aside cans of tuna fish and saltine crackers. But you can have enough

01:09:37.120 | food to get yourself through a week without power by just simply deepening your pantry

01:09:44.080 | and then using freezers, of course. The other thing I would say is that the reason why a generator is

01:09:48.720 | important is because some of the easiest food storage methodologies involve your freezer.

01:09:54.480 | And so if you can have a big deep freezer that's full of food and you can make sure that that

01:09:59.520 | freezer is not going to get warm so you have a backup power source. Now, you can get a freezer

01:10:03.440 | that runs on propane itself. That may be a good idea. Or just simply make sure that you have a

01:10:07.760 | generator or yeah, a generator is the best. And you have an extended ability to do that, then that's

01:10:12.960 | one of your simplest ways. Just have frozen food. It'll last for a long time if you can keep it cold.

01:10:17.040 | But you can fill up your freezers and that can get you through weeks and weeks if you just simply use

01:10:22.560 | frozen food. You can can food yourself. I've done it. We have a big pressure canner and I've canned

01:10:30.080 | a bunch of stuff. I like to can meat. You buy, go to the food restaurant supply store, buy a giant

01:10:35.920 | 50-pound box of chicken and then can the chicken, can the beef, etc. It's a lot cheaper than buying

01:10:41.840 | it and it's really useful just to have and it lasts for decades. So you can can food yourself.

01:10:46.720 | And you can can vegetables if you have a source of vegetables as well, either to buy them in bulk at

01:10:50.800 | the farmer's market or grow them yourself. Canning I'd say is cost a lot. It takes a lot of time and

01:10:56.720 | it costs a lot to get the infrastructure to buy a good pressure canner, to buy if you don't have a

01:11:01.440 | stove that will work with it already, to buy all of the jars, etc. But it's certainly a wonderful

01:11:06.720 | model. And so you'll probably do some of that yourself. It makes a lot of sense for everybody

01:11:12.240 | to have some freeze-dried foods, especially if you have the ability to turn them into meals like

01:11:17.360 | the meals in a jar concept. But those freeze-dried foods can add up. They can be more expensive,

01:11:22.240 | although when you actually do the cost calculations, they're pretty good. It's just that they

01:11:26.400 | feel more expensive when you're paying massive money for a number 10 can. It makes a lot of

01:11:31.440 | sense to have some MREs, meals ready to eat. They're not that expensive. And one of the things

01:11:37.520 | I like about meals ready to eat is that they're not very healthy, but they are really calorie rich.

01:11:42.640 | But many times having MREs in the car will allow you to avoid having to make a stop at restaurant

01:11:49.600 | food, etc. And so just it's a useful thing because they're packed and they're ready to go at all

01:11:54.080 | times and they taste okay. Then it's useful to have those set up as a backup. And then when you

01:12:01.040 | start to get to the bulk storage and you think about how do I get my family through a year or

01:12:05.520 | multiple years, and more importantly, how do I get my extended family through? Because I've got,

01:12:10.240 | you know, this big extended family or my neighbors. That's when you really get to the bulk storage

01:12:14.640 | options. How do I have buckets and buckets of food and wheat and corn? And then you can kind

01:12:19.680 | of level up to there. But I've given you a lot of words and I don't know that I've given you an

01:12:26.160 | exact answer. So I'll point you in simply this direction. Start by simply thinking yourself

01:12:33.920 | about what you would need. And I want people desperately to stay practical. It is certainly

01:12:40.240 | true that maybe you have to go five years. Maybe there's World War III and for years you can't,

01:12:49.680 | I don't know, that's even that, I can't even believe that. But maybe there's a global flu

01:12:53.840 | pandemic and you got to stay quarantined for six months or a year. Like that stuff happens.

01:12:57.520 | But the vast majority of disasters are hurricanes, ice storms, and they're solved in a week,

01:13:03.120 | couple weeks, etc. So just start by preparing for that and that will put you far ahead of everything

01:13:08.960 | else and you won't wind up making a $10,000 MRE purchase and then find out you don't like the

01:13:14.800 | MREs. So go slow and you put together the plans based upon your situation, based upon the food

01:13:20.320 | that you eat and the things that you like. I will commend to you a book, the best book that I think

01:13:26.800 | people should start with on this space would be Tess Pennington's book on introductory prepping.

01:13:33.440 | It's called The Prepper's Blueprint, the step-by-step guide to help you prepare for any

01:13:39.680 | disaster. I think that's a pretty good one and it goes through the basics and she starts you with

01:13:45.680 | two weeks of food and water and then tools and emergency medical supplies and emergency

01:13:50.320 | communication and pet preparedness, then 72-hour bags, then evacuation, home security, emergency

01:13:56.320 | sanitation, emergency medical supplies, dental preparedness, and she goes deep, deep, deep all

01:14:00.720 | the way in, then you move up to one month supply of food little by little and then you move on to

01:14:05.200 | even longer term stuff little by little. So I would commend that to you to be a good place to

01:14:10.320 | start. I think it's a very practical book, it's a well-done book, lots of useful suggestions. I

01:14:16.400 | don't think you'd go wrong if you haven't read Tess Pennington's The Prepper's Blueprint, I would

01:14:21.360 | recommend that you start there. The key is to study, learn, and then customize things to your

01:14:27.760 | situation. I work from home, thus I don't have a get-home bag, but if I worked in the city and my

01:14:35.040 | family were in the suburbs, I'd have a get-home bag at my office, I'd make sure I always had a

01:14:40.800 | bicycle, for example, and the simplest things that can do if you work far from home, one of the

01:14:45.440 | simplest and best things that you could do is buy yourself a fold-up bicycle and keep a fold-up

01:14:50.160 | bicycle in the trunk of your car or stashed somewhere at work, etc. so that if you ever

01:14:54.640 | needed to get home and the roads were full or fuel were scarce or something like that,

01:14:59.440 | you have the ability to get on a bicycle and get yourself home much faster. I mean, that's the

01:15:04.080 | biggest fear as a father, that's the biggest fear I have is if I'm separated from my family and can't

01:15:09.360 | get home. But simple things like having cash, cash solves the problems. Whenever I travel,

01:15:15.920 | I make sure that I have enough cash to get home from wherever I wind up being, even if my credit

01:15:20.960 | cards didn't work and even if I, you know, something happened because I need to get, I need

01:15:24.480 | to take care of my family. So your situation is different if you live in the city, if you live

01:15:29.680 | in the country, if you work in the city, if you work at home, if you live in the north, if you

01:15:33.280 | live in the south, so you will have to adjust things even to your space and adjusting to your

01:15:41.920 | threats that you're concerned about. And I think that you have to consider your budget and

01:15:46.880 | prioritize things. If I lived in Kansas, I would spend a couple hundred dollars on food and water

01:15:53.840 | and then I would install a tornado shelter if my house didn't have one, just because to me that is

01:16:00.160 | a much more fearful threat than somehow running out of food. The chances of needing more than a

01:16:04.880 | couple weeks of food is minimal compared to the risk of not having a safe shelter to go through,

01:16:10.560 | to go to a nice tornado shelter that I can get my family into to prepare for that. Now that's

01:16:16.000 | different than the risk of tornadoes in Florida and that's different than Minnesota. So adjust

01:16:21.520 | to your things and then just simply allow your budget to grow from there. I hope that was in

01:16:27.760 | some way helpful. I commend you for asking the questions. There's no excuse for any of us not to

01:16:32.320 | be able to at any time be able to take care of ourselves and take care of those that we're

01:16:37.600 | responsible for for minimum a few weeks or a month. It's too simple to ignore. It's irresponsible to

01:16:45.440 | ignore. Thank you for listening to today's show. Thank you for the questions. If you'd like to

01:16:48.320 | participate in a future show, sign up and become a patron of the show. You can do that at patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance

01:16:54.480 | patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance. Next week I will be talking with you about...

01:17:00.400 | It's not good to do an ad and then you forget what you're talking about. Recession.

01:17:07.920 | We're going to talk about preparing for the coming recession, how to prepare for recession, and

01:17:12.480 | certainly prepping is a component of that. Prepping is a component of that. You'll find many stories.

01:17:19.120 | I found after the 2008 recessions, I started studying and looking into it and I found several

01:17:25.520 | stories of Mormon families who talked about how having their year of food storage saved them when

01:17:31.760 | they lost their jobs and it really makes a big difference. When you have the ability, when you

01:17:36.640 | have a year of food set aside, which is simple to get to. If you don't want to buy Tess Pennington's

01:17:42.320 | book, just download the LDS Preparedness Manual and do what they do. Go to the LDS cannery and

01:17:47.520 | can your foods. It's all there. The LDS church has done a wonderful job of preparing those things for

01:17:53.760 | you. But if you have a year of food supply, that's a year that you could go without buying food if

01:17:59.840 | you lost your job in a recession. So it really, really has a strong, strong... I mean there's no

01:18:05.680 | downside. As long as you can work out the storage space and do it intelligently, there's no downside

01:18:10.080 | whatsoever. Very, very important. Check out those episodes I talked about and get together.

01:18:16.160 | patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance.

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