RPF0690-Seven_Rings_of_Freedom-Spousal

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00:00:30.000 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,

00:00:33.600 | skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now, while

00:00:38.120 | building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less. Today we continue our 7 Rings

00:00:43.580 | of Freedom series. This series is intended for me to share with you some ideas that I

00:00:48.720 | believe will help you to live a freer life. After all, one of the major reasons why people

00:00:55.440 | are pursuing financial independence is to experience more personal freedom. And I believe

00:01:00.920 | that that is an excellent way to achieve more personal freedom. We will talk about that

00:01:05.800 | as this 7th Ring, true financial independence, the ability to live off of the income from

00:01:10.440 | your investments, without question, brings you more freedom and more independence. However,

00:01:16.800 | I'm convinced there are a number of things that you can do prior to financial independence

00:01:21.560 | that will help you to enjoy much more of that freedom and independence. Some of these things

00:01:28.760 | are fairly well talked about. We'll talk about living free of debt. We'll talk about entrepreneurship.

00:01:33.780 | But some of these things are, in my opinion, under-discussed. For example, today's topic

00:01:39.640 | about spousal liberty, family liberty. I'm sharing this series from personal experience.

00:01:47.720 | All of these things are things that I have done and I didn't realize how good my decisions

00:01:54.080 | would have been until I worked my way through them. And I've come to the point where, although

00:01:58.660 | I'm not yet financially independent, working on it, but not yet there, I already live a

00:02:05.240 | freer lifestyle than anybody that I know. And I live as free of a lifestyle as I can

00:02:11.400 | imagine, and in some cases, freer than I can imagine people who are truly, you know, totally

00:02:16.840 | financially independent. More opportunities, more interest, etc. Now, I'm looking forward

00:02:20.760 | to financial independence, but these are some things that I have done that have really been

00:02:25.180 | helpful to me. And so today, I'm going to talk to you about the value of having a stay

00:02:33.320 | at home wife. Both the financial value and the way that that has impacted my life positively

00:02:41.160 | for tremendous personal freedom. I'm going to try to sell you on the idea. For those

00:02:47.280 | of you who are interested, some people don't need any selling. This is just absolutely

00:02:51.960 | the way that we're going to structure our family. Some people, they're like, "Absolutely

00:02:55.520 | not. I'm never going to do that." Okay, well, tune out here. But for those of you who are

00:03:00.080 | in the middle, who've thought about this, who've considered it, I'm going to share some

00:03:03.200 | personal experiences as to why I believe that for a couple to make this decision is one

00:03:09.120 | of the most profoundly impactful and freeing decisions. Now, I didn't know what order to

00:03:16.380 | put these in, so I just picked my own personal order. Because we're going to talk about things

00:03:21.240 | like entrepreneurship down the road, which is also a very freeing decision. But this

00:03:26.360 | is one of the things that has improved my life in innumerable ways. What I have found

00:03:35.720 | is that having a wife who does not have a paid job outside of the house has been one

00:03:43.860 | of the most freeing and positive and profitable, financially profitable lifestyle decisions

00:03:52.120 | that we could have made. And it's been that way for me, and it's been that way for her.

00:04:01.640 | For both of us, it has tremendously improved our lives. Now, I'll share with you a little

00:04:05.960 | bit of the backstory. This isn't something that was necessarily a big deal to me when

00:04:12.320 | I was younger, before the time I was planning to get married. Didn't really think much about

00:04:17.240 | it, really at all. I was raised in a home where my mom was always home when I was younger.

00:04:23.520 | And then, I guess about when I was in my 10, 11, 12 years old, when I was in seventh grade,

00:04:29.400 | my mom took a job at a local private school so that our family could afford the tuition

00:04:33.240 | payments there. And so she worked at that job at the private school for a number of

00:04:36.840 | years, all the years that I was through high school. And then after we all graduated from

00:04:40.000 | high school, then she left that job and she went back home to become a stay-at-home wife

00:04:44.800 | and mother again. So, obviously, being raised in that kind of environment, I just intuited

00:04:49.680 | that lifestyle naturally. That's different than a lot of people. But I didn't think a

00:04:53.520 | lot about it. I didn't pay much attention to it. When my wife and I first married, we

00:04:58.960 | didn't have these long, drawn-out conversations of, "This is exactly what we're going to do."

00:05:03.180 | But we both had a pretty obvious and clear plan that when we had children, that she would

00:05:08.840 | be a stay-at-home mom. That was important to us for the health and well-being of our

00:05:13.160 | children. But when we first married, my wife had a job. She had the job that she had for

00:05:17.480 | years and I was working, had a business. She had a job. And so we continued to have those

00:05:22.760 | jobs for the first year of our marriage. And then we conceived our first baby. And sometime

00:05:27.880 | before the birth, I forget exactly the timeline, she submitted her resignation and she quit

00:05:34.400 | her job to be home to prepare for the birth of our first child.

00:05:38.960 | And up until that time, I did not realize how annoying it was to have two full-time

00:05:50.840 | jobs in the family. Now, in many ways, we had a better, freer situation than a lot of

00:05:57.040 | people because we lived fairly light. We were fairly young. We had minimal obligations.

00:06:04.080 | When I, prior to marriage, I withdrew from all the previous things, all the boards that

00:06:08.720 | I had been on, all the community organizations I'd volunteered with. I just wanted all that

00:06:12.200 | stuff out of my life when I was entering into a family life. And so we had a fairly simple

00:06:16.920 | life. We lived in a small apartment. It made things fairly easy and simple for us. But

00:06:21.880 | all of a sudden, my life improved immeasurably once my wife was home. Now, at that point,

00:06:26.240 | she was quite pregnant, as I imagine, and the baby was, of course, going to change things.

00:06:31.040 | But my life improved immeasurably. And I had not realized how much nicer things would be

00:06:37.960 | if my wife had more time. She became more relaxed. She had more energy, was able to

00:06:45.880 | do more interesting things. Our food became more interesting. She had time for some personal

00:06:51.920 | growth activities and personal entertainment and things that she'd previously ignored because

00:06:57.380 | she had time to be at home. And as a husband, it made me feel awesome to see that improvement

00:07:03.760 | for her. It made me feel really great to see how much more she was enjoying not having

00:07:08.400 | to go to work and report to a boss every day. And in time, I've came to really, really appreciate

00:07:13.340 | how much better my life was getting when I had a wife who had the time and the freedom

00:07:18.520 | to focus on me and our household and our family's needs and goals, instead of a wife who was

00:07:25.120 | torn in two directions, trying to produce a profit for her employer, while also trying

00:07:30.560 | to care for our family. Now, we came to that decision fairly quickly. It was a little over

00:07:37.000 | a year of marriage, something like that. She quit very quickly. But at this point, when

00:07:41.320 | I look back, if knowing what I now know, I wish she had quit faster, because our lives

00:07:47.720 | became much, much better. Her life and my life became much, much better. Now, interestingly,

00:07:57.800 | in addition to that, our financial opportunities expanded significantly. And I think one of

00:08:05.840 | the most under discussed components of financial productivity, especially for married couples,

00:08:13.360 | is just simply how hard it is for two people who are engaged in careers, especially if

00:08:19.960 | they have children, most importantly, of course, if they have children, let's not fool ourselves.

00:08:24.280 | But it's very hard to build two profitable and productive careers and to have a quality

00:08:30.000 | home life, a quality family life. Now, if a couple does not have children, and if a

00:08:35.320 | couple lives a very simple lifestyle, don't have a big house, it's a very simple lifestyle,

00:08:42.280 | and they don't want children, and they're both going to be involved in careers, then

00:08:46.120 | I think that it's fairly obvious that that decision right there, they can still be extremely

00:08:50.640 | financially productive. If you can put a $250,000 salary on top of another $250,000 salary and

00:08:57.280 | have the savings of living together, having things concentrated, etc., you have a great

00:09:05.080 | opportunity for wealth. And I think that there's no question that if that couple continues

00:09:13.480 | to work together and both continue to earn lots of money and contribute lots of money,

00:09:16.720 | they're going to be really wealthy. And financially, I can't make the argument with a straight

00:09:21.920 | face that somehow if the husband or the wife goes home and stays at home, they're going

00:09:26.160 | to be better off financially. I do think that the lifestyle can improve, but when you make

00:09:31.320 | lots and lots of money, if you have lots of money, you can buy a lot of things done and

00:09:34.640 | still be in good shape. But the wrinkle comes in if you desire children, and if you desire

00:09:40.360 | to have a quality, rewarding, fulfilling family life. I don't see how it's possible for a

00:09:48.880 | couple where both the husband and the wife have normal jobs, I don't see how it's possible

00:09:55.880 | for either of them to really succeed in a career without facing a major problem and

00:10:04.040 | having your family life really suffer. And I think it's an extremely inefficient model

00:10:09.800 | to pursue. In fact, it's the worst model to pursue. Time and time again, I find myself

00:10:13.840 | doing consultations with clients where both the husband and the wife have good professional

00:10:19.360 | jobs. And my answer to them all the time is basically, "Yeah, you're doing fine. You have

00:10:24.360 | good incomes, and that's great." They say, "Joshua, how do we lower our tax bill?" And

00:10:28.280 | my answer is simply, "You can't. There is nothing that you can do if both a husband

00:10:33.160 | and a wife earn high W-2 incomes. You are the most highly taxed possible household in

00:10:40.800 | existence. And what's worse is that you have the highest possible personal expenses in

00:10:46.920 | existence." So it's an incredibly inefficient model. And then when you bring in the demands

00:10:51.960 | of children, and you bring in normal, loving parents who want the best for their children

00:10:56.640 | and want a strong family life, it's almost impossible to do that and succeed at a career.

00:11:01.840 | If you want to really make a lot of money, if you want to really build a big business,

00:11:07.160 | it will require a huge amount of time and a huge amount of energy. And if you feel like

00:11:15.440 | your children are being neglected because of the time and the energy required for you

00:11:20.440 | to build your career, you're probably not going to build that career. Now, when you

00:11:25.480 | think it through and you say, "Well, what's the marker of my children being neglected?"

00:11:29.520 | Well, usually it's just lack of time with parents. Complete lack of time with parents.

00:11:36.640 | I've known and worked with some very successful couples, big career for husband, big career

00:11:41.080 | for wife, massive income levels, massive levels of wealth, who can afford to hire the very

00:11:46.880 | best caretakers for their children. Live-in nanny, live-in au pair, housekeepers for everything,

00:11:53.840 | the world's best teachers, nanny to take the children back and forth from the best school

00:11:58.000 | in the community, etc. Can those parents make a lot of money? Yeah, they can. My experience

00:12:06.560 | has been the majority of the time though, they see how their lack of presence is having

00:12:12.400 | an impact on their children. Now, whether that comes out in the short term or the long

00:12:18.160 | term, don't know. And every couple has to do with the very best that they believe, what

00:12:22.000 | they believe is best for their family. But I think often it's just simply an unnecessary

00:12:27.040 | cost. It's an unnecessary cost to the family. And yet, if you have, for me for example,

00:12:36.520 | my business and my job can take a significant amount of time. But because I know that my

00:12:42.960 | wife is fully involved with the children, because I know that my children aren't with

00:12:47.800 | a stranger, they're not sitting in an after-school program waiting to be picked up by somebody

00:12:52.280 | that I send on rushed out, because I know that they have their mom there to protect

00:12:56.360 | them, to care for them, to love them, and to support them, it makes it easy for me to

00:13:00.960 | do the work that I need to do. If I need to work late, family dinner still happens. Now,

00:13:07.120 | it may happen without me, which is less than ideal, and very rarely happens, but at least

00:13:12.560 | I know their mother is there. At least they still have that same constant ability. And

00:13:17.800 | in time, if you care about building family wealth, and you care about building multi-generational

00:13:22.240 | wealth, you're going to have to build a strong family culture that will see your family through

00:13:29.000 | in time. And you cannot build a strong family culture, you cannot build rich and rewarding

00:13:36.280 | relationships with your children when they're being raised by paid professionals. Doesn't

00:13:44.520 | happen. So, from a wealth productivity perspective, I am personally convinced that there's far

00:13:55.080 | more of a compounding effect to have one very large and productive career, and to have one

00:14:05.760 | very solid and loving family leader, family facilitator. That way you can have the best

00:14:15.240 | of both worlds. You can have a very large income, you can have a very large business,

00:14:20.000 | and you can have a strong family culture. I don't know how to prove this, but here's

00:14:27.600 | in a nutshell what I'm saying. I'm personally convinced that if you have a, let's say you

00:14:32.600 | have a 30 year old mother and father. And a 30 year old mother and father both have,

00:14:38.760 | let's just say they both earn $80,000 per year. Each of them earns $80,000 per year,

00:14:43.840 | and they have two or three children. I'm personally convinced that because of the constraints of

00:14:50.400 | trying to raise children effectively, and the fact that they both be working 40 hours

00:14:55.720 | a week, rushing home to get the kids and have family dinner real quick before bed, baths

00:15:01.120 | and beds. That if you look at the career trajectory of both of them with a 40 hour work week,

00:15:08.320 | it's not going to be nearly as high of a growth rate as if you have one career where you can

00:15:19.480 | put in 60 to 70 hours a week. I'm convinced that one career will compound more based upon

00:15:27.640 | more time, more freedom to invest in it. But that would be a tremendous cost to the children

00:15:32.960 | if you had both careers doing that. And so it's much better to have mom take care of

00:15:39.360 | the children, dad build the family business, and in time you have a strong family culture

00:15:46.680 | and a tremendous income. Don't know how to prove that, don't know how to even research

00:15:51.160 | it, but that's my instinct. Now what I can prove to you is you have an opportunity for

00:15:56.480 | a far more efficient financial life if you separate the income and the spending. Now

00:16:07.760 | I was fortunate, and I say that very sincerely, I was fortunate in the fact that my wife,

00:16:14.880 | she never had big career ambitions and she didn't make a ton of money. And so we didn't

00:16:19.040 | have to face that very difficult decision that some couples face where both the husband

00:16:23.720 | and the wife make a lot of money. Now I've done shows on the past on how to calculate

00:16:27.920 | the true cost of working, etc. But I'm thankful that we didn't need to do that. But the thing

00:16:37.160 | I have learned is that if you care about an efficient, productive life, it's hard to do

00:16:42.880 | that with two full-time incomes in a household, again, and children. The reason often comes

00:16:49.600 | down to cost of goods and taxes. With taxes, the most impactful taxes are income taxes

00:16:57.840 | and sales taxes. When you have two W-2 incomes in a house, you have the highest possible

00:17:06.400 | tax rates in that scenario. We have a high income and you have high taxes. And because

00:17:10.040 | of the, blanking on a call, progressive, because of the progressive tax system in the United

00:17:17.880 | States, the more money you make, the more you pay in taxes. And so the less and less

00:17:22.240 | incentive you have to work. Now another big challenge is that when purchasing things,

00:17:27.520 | you pay a lot of taxes to buy things where most of us live in sales tax states. And if

00:17:31.960 | you have one person who's exclusively focused on the well-being of the household and who's

00:17:36.820 | focused on getting the household efficient in its spending, and you have the other person

00:17:44.300 | who's focused on earning income, you can have a far more efficient financial life. Let me

00:17:50.480 | give you some examples of some things that play into account. Something as simple as,

00:17:57.400 | let's say you're a couple, and I'm going to leave children out of it at the beginning

00:18:00.240 | here. Let's say that you're a couple and you want to choose a house to live in. That's

00:18:05.140 | an activity that can take a very significant amount of time. It can take time to find a

00:18:10.360 | really great deal, whether it's on a rental house or on a house to buy. And yet if you're

00:18:16.440 | trying to juggle that time around your work, it can be difficult. Whereas if you have more

00:18:23.040 | time, you know, my wife, you know, if I say to my wife, "Listen, we've got to find a place

00:18:26.280 | to live." And if she's just got time to go and look for a house, she can find us a great

00:18:30.680 | house to live in. She can find us a great house to buy. She has the time and the ability

00:18:35.300 | to go and look at 50 houses before we buy one, instead of us rushing around on Tuesday

00:18:41.520 | night at 7.30 PM or rushing around on Saturday morning to see four showings. And we get so

00:18:45.840 | tired of that, we look at 15 houses before we buy one. And those numbers of the time

00:18:50.960 | required to find a deal, those numbers of savings can be really, really significant.

00:18:57.680 | So that's an example of an activity that my wife can do because of her time freedom that

00:19:02.560 | I can't do if I'm busy working at a job where I've got to be there from 8 to 5 every day.

00:19:08.880 | And that's just the start of it. What about getting that house fixed up and decorating

00:19:13.320 | it, furnishing it, etc.? Well, if you're busy at a job from 8 to 5 every day and you want

00:19:18.080 | to decorate the house, you've got a little time on Saturday, a little time on Sunday

00:19:21.200 | afternoon to do that, but not nearly as much time as if, you know, my wife, she's got a

00:19:26.880 | full week to do it. And so maybe you don't have time to paint all that much or you're

00:19:31.440 | going to come home, what most of us do, and I'm not trying to be unreasonable, but I am

00:19:35.080 | trying to make a point. So I'm not saying that you would just automatically hire painters,

00:19:38.960 | but you know what? A lot of people do. It's hard to go to a job every day, work from 8

00:19:43.000 | to 5, and then come home and paint the house. So one of the things that my wife always enjoyed

00:19:47.600 | doing a lot of was painting. I never liked painting. Oh, and she had time to paint stuff?

00:19:51.680 | She's got time. She can do it on Tuesday morning and work from 10 o'clock to noon, turn on

00:19:56.080 | some nice music, she's relaxed, the light is good, and she can enjoy that painting process.

00:20:01.280 | And the savings there are really significant. The labor is really, really valuable. She

00:20:06.760 | has the time to go and look through the seconds or the returns at the Home Depot paint desk

00:20:12.720 | and get the paint for cheaper, or buy it at a garage sale, buy it on Craigslist. These

00:20:17.760 | savings add up. They're all little, but they add up big time. So if we hired painters or

00:20:23.520 | if we paid retail price for paint, well, we wind up paying a high price for the paint

00:20:28.920 | versus getting it on Craigslist cheap. And we wind up paying sales tax on that paint

00:20:34.920 | versus no sales tax buying it on Craigslist. And we have to, if we hire painters, well,

00:20:40.400 | she can do the painting with no need for us to pay from out of tax income, no need for

00:20:46.520 | us to pay, you know, we lose 15% on employment taxes, lose another, say, 15 to 30% on income

00:20:56.440 | taxes. So instead of losing 70 cents on the dollar, she gets those savings for doing that

00:21:02.120 | work herself. So hiring painters can only be done with after tax dollars. What about

00:21:06.840 | furnishing a house? Well, if we've just got time to go and look at furniture on Saturday

00:21:12.120 | morning, we're going to be pretty constrained to just paying retail. One of the highest

00:21:17.880 | markups out there is furniture. But if my wife has time to do the planning herself,

00:21:25.560 | she can go online, she can look around on Craigslist, she can look around on Facebook,

00:21:29.440 | she can, has the time to put together to go and pick up some of that stuff. She can save

00:21:33.760 | a huge amount on the cost of furnishing. My wife finds most of our furniture on the side

00:21:37.840 | of the road or finds it on Craigslist. She brings it home and sands it down and then

00:21:42.660 | repaints it. And then now we've got a great looking furniture that was practically free,

00:21:47.200 | sometimes completely free, just the cost of paint. Decorating, getting stuff cheaply and

00:21:52.160 | then putting, having the time to create something rather than just to go out and buy the expensive

00:21:56.960 | after tax thing. Is this a big deal if you have a million dollar household income? No.

00:22:05.400 | But is it a big deal if you've got an $80,000 household income? It's huge. These savings

00:22:11.860 | add up massively. What about just simply making a home pleasant to be in? One of the single

00:22:18.240 | most valuable things that my wife does is to work to make our house nice. To make it

00:22:26.080 | a place that we want to be. And if your home is a place that you like to be, that you enjoy

00:22:31.440 | being, you're far less likely to want to run away all the time and go out and spend money

00:22:36.560 | constantly. I don't know how to articulate exactly how she does it, but there's something

00:22:42.320 | special about a house that is built and that is put together with love that makes it nice

00:22:50.680 | to be in. So the place that you want to be on Tuesday night is at home. The place that

00:22:56.240 | you want to be on Saturday morning is at home. What about the cost and the work of cleaning

00:23:02.560 | and maintaining a house? Well, you can hire a maid, you can hire a handyman, but those

00:23:08.520 | expenses are always done with after-tax money, which means there's automatically maybe 30%

00:23:14.320 | higher expenses because you get 70 cents on the dollar after it. But yet, if my wife has

00:23:20.240 | the time to do that kind of thing, to clean the house, to maintain it, to do some of the

00:23:24.840 | little jobs, it creates a tremendous cost savings. What about yard work, landscaping,

00:23:33.360 | gardening? Well, obviously, that stuff adds up. I don't have a lot of incentive if I'm

00:23:38.400 | working 50 hours a week and my wife is working 50 hours a week and the only time we have

00:23:42.280 | together is Saturday and Sunday. I don't have a lot of incentive not to go ahead and pay

00:23:46.860 | the $300 a month or $200 a month to pay a professional landscaper to come and cut the

00:23:51.560 | grass because I need that time back. But if she does it, she can do it on Tuesday morning

00:24:05.120 | when it's cool and there's savings there, financial savings and lifestyle savings. What

00:24:11.360 | about things like growing food, landscaping? One of the most valuable, biggest returns

00:24:16.860 | on investment is from a home garden, from home fruit trees, from home vegetables. Go

00:24:23.800 | to your grocery store, look at the cost of fruit, look at the cost of vegetables and

00:24:27.960 | look at your land and realize that you've got all the necessary elements sitting there

00:24:32.960 | to create that stuff for you. But what does gardening cost? Time. Not necessarily a huge

00:24:40.360 | amount of time, but it needs consistent time, a little bit every day. So if my wife can

00:24:48.600 | grow a garden, she can reduce our food bill by hundreds of dollars per month. And again,

00:24:53.920 | all after tax savings. Much more efficient. A home flock of chickens, some home animals.

00:25:00.960 | Very very useful. Better quality, more nutrient dense and cheaper. Can also be profitable

00:25:09.920 | too as far as a home business. What about shopping? One of the really valuable things

00:25:15.480 | that my wife can do is she has the time to go and to shop for the needs of the household.

00:25:20.780 | So if we need clothes or we need food, we need things like that. She has the ability

00:25:26.640 | to do those things far less expensively. It's been harder since we left the United States,

00:25:31.440 | but when we were in the United States, we bought a total of I think four outfits for

00:25:39.960 | our children. Every other piece of clothing that our children wore was free. The four

00:25:47.360 | outfits that we bought was just simply because they were cute and we wanted them. It was

00:25:51.520 | just a splurge. It wasn't necessary. But every other piece of clothing for our children was

00:25:56.000 | free. The shoes that they wore, free. Now we have not been able to continue that since

00:26:01.280 | leaving the United States simply because where we live now, the free market is not as abundant

00:26:05.600 | as it was back there. Thankfully we have tremendous other cost savings and so now we spend money

00:26:09.860 | on clothes like normal people. But when we were in the United States, it was tremendous.

00:26:13.800 | And my wife had all of bins of clothes laid out for all the coming years of the children.

00:26:18.600 | And what did that cost? Well not money, but time. So she would make it, we would take

00:26:23.960 | all the hand-me-downs from other people whose children were growing up. We would keep our

00:26:28.160 | ears open for things that were available in the free market. My wife would watch the diaper

00:26:34.320 | groups, she'd watch the cloth diaper groups and take free bundles of cloth diapers and

00:26:37.480 | whatnot from other people or from people who their kids outgrew it and they were getting

00:26:40.560 | rid of their stuff. She'd watch the mother groups and go and pick the stuff up. Then

00:26:44.040 | she'd sort through it, get the stains out of stuff, keep the stuff she wanted and get

00:26:47.480 | rid of the other stuff. Sometimes she would buy and sell it. So she would pay some for

00:26:51.000 | cloth diapers, keep the ones she wanted, then resell the other ones on eBay and make a profit

00:26:55.440 | on some of those things. If you calculate the cost of clothing for children, it's tremendously,

00:27:02.040 | it's very expensive. You get all of it for free. You save money on the money required

00:27:07.680 | to buy it, right, which was all after tax money. No way to save on that. You save money

00:27:12.880 | on the purchase price, no sales tax, no expensive retail clothing. It's a tremendous, tremendous

00:27:19.400 | financial value. Other things like the needs of the food needs, etc. The ability to go

00:27:24.720 | and get this from this store and that from that store. When it's Saturday morning and

00:27:28.640 | all you've got is Saturday morning to do all your errands, it gets so annoying to try to

00:27:32.320 | go to eight different stores to capture the sales. But if you've got time to spread it

00:27:36.680 | out through the week. I always grew up with my mom, we'd go to four or five different

00:27:39.920 | stores and she would get, she knew she always got her meat from this store and she shopped

00:27:44.120 | the sales at this store and she went to the bulk food store for this and went to the health

00:27:47.120 | food store for that and just a little bit there. That costs time, but it's a major,

00:27:51.600 | major savings. Major savings because of the lower cost, the after tax savings, hundreds

00:27:57.800 | of dollars per month. Really big deal. What about things like the work involved of doing

00:28:02.340 | things like preparing food? When you have somebody who has the time to cook, to cook

00:28:07.360 | from scratch, you can get far better, far more interesting and far healthier food at

00:28:13.360 | pennies on the dollar. Much, much better. When my wife and I were both working at a

00:28:18.400 | job, we wound up, even though we didn't even have children, we wound up eating out quite

00:28:22.680 | a lot because you'd come home, come home at 5.30, 6 o'clock, you're hungry. Maybe you

00:28:26.760 | put something in the crock pot beforehand, but then you get tired of crock pot food.

00:28:30.000 | No, it's chicken and carrots and onions and potatoes again in the crock pot. You get tired

00:28:34.700 | of crock pot food. And so you wind up going out all the time. Now you add children into

00:28:40.040 | the mix and it's even more than that where you wind up going out all the time. Whereas

00:28:43.880 | if she's got time and she can make something that's interesting, that takes time, learning

00:28:47.720 | a new technique, you have better, more interesting and healthier food at pennies on the dollar.

00:28:53.840 | Huge opportunity to save money and to make a huge contribution to the household. Things

00:29:00.520 | like supervising professionals when their services are needed. Let's say that you've

00:29:04.920 | got a guy coming to fix the cable. Well, that can impact your work schedule significantly.

00:29:11.280 | Mom and dad are both working. You got a guy coming to fix the cable. He's only going to

00:29:14.360 | come sometime between 9am and 6pm, right? Because that's the time slot they give you.

00:29:19.620 | So you stay home from work and you take a personal day and maybe you try to work a little

00:29:23.320 | bit from home, but you're not nearly as effective and productive as you are if you were at your

00:29:27.680 | office actually working during that time. But if my wife's at home, she's got to meet

00:29:31.880 | the cable guy. She's got the time to do it. Or somebody's coming to work on the house.

00:29:36.520 | She has the ability to supervise them. And perhaps that supervision enables you to get

00:29:40.500 | better results. Handyman's coming to work on the house, but she's there to watch him

00:29:44.800 | to make sure that things are done and that things are done well. Probably going to work

00:29:48.480 | tiny bit harder, little bit faster, etc. So supervising professionals when they're needed

00:29:53.240 | is a big, big deal. Or having the ability to assist professionals when they're needed.

00:29:59.240 | So the ability to hire somebody who's a lone guy and he comes over and says, "Okay, I'll

00:30:03.560 | come over and work on Tuesday." But one of the things I found when I've done construction

00:30:07.340 | work is that if you don't have somebody who can help you as a construction worker, you

00:30:12.760 | wind up spending all your time going to get supplies and things from the store. Really,

00:30:16.680 | really frustrating. It's very hard to work in a business like that and then also to work

00:30:20.080 | on a business. Well, you can hire some guy who comes over and moonlights and then my

00:30:25.920 | wife can go and get things from the store. My parents built a house when we were younger.

00:30:29.760 | And one of the things that my mom did that was just such an incredible asset to the process

00:30:33.880 | is that she was always the gopher. My dad would be working on the house or there'd be

00:30:37.360 | other professionals and when they needed something, instead of one of the very expensive workers

00:30:44.800 | having to stop and go to Home Depot, my mom would be able to go to Home Depot for them.

00:30:48.760 | Saved them thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars on the house because you kept the

00:30:53.480 | professionals, the professional plumber, the professional electrician, the professional

00:30:56.420 | builders kept them at work. Major, major contribution to the family budget. You have the ability

00:31:02.160 | just to handle the errands and administrative items from the household. The visit to the

00:31:07.200 | bank, the visit to go and renew the car insurance or renew the registration, etc. When my wife,

00:31:15.480 | if she's got the time to do those things during the day, those are things that I don't have

00:31:19.400 | to do at night and on the weekends. And that's a tremendous benefit to the value of the family,

00:31:25.000 | to the family culture. It's so much easier to do those errands and administrative items

00:31:30.560 | during business hours than it is to try to work them all in at night and on the weekends

00:31:34.760 | or take PTO to do them on a Tuesday. You have the opportunity to make better household decisions.

00:31:41.120 | She has time to do the financial tracking or to go and to carefully shop among the different

00:31:45.920 | internet providers or to shop about investment providers. How do we choose the best investments?

00:31:51.880 | Sometimes, if so inclined, your wife may have the ability to run an investment portfolio

00:31:56.480 | really effectively. We'll talk about this more in entrepreneurship. But one of the most

00:32:00.400 | important things that you can do to live a tax efficient lifestyle is make sure that

00:32:05.920 | you don't have two W-2 incomes. And at the very least, that you have one W-2 income and

00:32:11.360 | you have one business owner and/or investor. Far more efficient to have one wage earner

00:32:18.360 | and one business owner or investor in the couple than to have two W-2 incomes. So things

00:32:26.800 | like managing rental houses, again, overseeing and supervising workers and things like that

00:32:33.760 | are much more effectively done when you're not simultaneously trying to hold down an

00:32:37.320 | hourly job. Very importantly, if my wife is not trying to keep a job every day and earn

00:32:45.200 | a paycheck, she has the opportunity to be a far better member of the local community.

00:32:52.400 | In my opinion, one of the major losses in US American culture, broadly speaking, one

00:32:59.440 | of the major losses in US American culture due to both moms and dads working full-time

00:33:05.440 | jobs has been the destruction of local community life. I used to be a financial advisor. When

00:33:13.160 | I was doing that, I would drive around a lot. If you drive into the vast majority of suburban

00:33:17.400 | neighborhoods during the day, during the afternoon, they're dead. There's nobody there. There's

00:33:24.600 | no vibrant community life because there's nobody there. The mom and dad are downtown

00:33:30.840 | working at a job. The children are institutionalized in a school or in an after-school program

00:33:36.520 | or somewhere out. They can't be at home because we can't have our kids at home, right? Can't

00:33:40.720 | be alone, too dangerous. And so there's almost nobody in that local community. But if my

00:33:47.240 | wife can be there in the local community, she has time to take care of somebody who's

00:33:52.440 | sick or in need. Very difficult when you have mom and dad both working a job 40 hours a

00:33:57.640 | week and Aunt Lois is sick. Who's going to go and take care of Aunt Lois? Well, my wife

00:34:03.560 | can do that if she's got time. Or to go and help a mother who needs help with children,

00:34:08.840 | to go and care for an elderly parent. Those things build together a community because

00:34:14.760 | now you have the opportunity to volunteer your time. You don't have to get paid. It's

00:34:19.200 | very difficult for somebody who's earning an income to keep their job and simultaneously

00:34:25.320 | fulfill their family responsibilities and still feel like they have time to volunteer.

00:34:29.760 | Some people do it. Their sleep usually suffers, which affects their health often. Some people

00:34:33.960 | do it. But it's very difficult. So it's much easier for somebody who's earning a job and

00:34:39.320 | trying to maintain their own personal and family life to send some money, to send a

00:34:43.800 | card, to make a donation, etc. to try to buy something with money. But often, although

00:34:49.120 | that's appreciated, obviously, you know, a gift card for groceries helps somebody who's

00:34:53.200 | sick who can't work, etc. But often the time and the relational support, the emotional

00:34:59.000 | support can make a much, much bigger impact. But in modern life, people who have jobs can't

00:35:07.520 | afford to commit the time for that stuff without a major cost to some other part of their life.

00:35:16.360 | So my wife has the ability to be a far better member of a local community because she doesn't

00:35:22.280 | have to work a job every day. Because she doesn't have to figure out how to keep a business

00:35:26.160 | profitable. She can just focus on family and community and do those things well. And that

00:35:32.200 | kind of community life has untold dividends in the long run, financially and otherwise.

00:35:41.880 | Could be as simple as having people to care for your children for you when you need to,

00:35:46.560 | when you need to work. Could be as simple as having neighbors who can come over and

00:35:50.520 | babysit for you without charging you money. Can be as simple as having a friend who loves

00:35:55.560 | you, who will listen to you so you don't have to pay a therapist to listen to all your problems.

00:36:01.360 | There are far-reaching ripple effects of having strong community members where not everybody,

00:36:07.720 | day and night, is thinking about making a buck.

00:36:13.280 | Now thus far I've said nothing about children. I've just talked about the value of my wife

00:36:20.160 | being able to care for our family regardless of children. And the thing that I didn't expect

00:36:25.300 | when I got married is I didn't expect that there would be benefits there. I thought there

00:36:28.520 | would be benefits for children. But I didn't expect that there would be benefits without

00:36:32.520 | that. A lot of people have this idea that, okay, yes, we see that it's useful for mom

00:36:36.960 | to be at home when there are children growing. But then as soon as children are out of the

00:36:41.240 | house then mom's going to go back to a job.

00:36:44.320 | Listen, you make your own decisions. It's a free world. What I'm trying to articulate

00:36:49.560 | to you is that I don't ever want her to have to go back to a job. Because her lifestyle,

00:36:57.280 | my lifestyle, and our family lifestyle is far better. Far, far better. Even without

00:37:09.080 | regard to the children. But now when you bring children in it becomes 10x in terms of the

00:37:15.280 | value. Obviously, the basic thing comes when you have babies. It is far better, more satisfying

00:37:27.240 | and easier for a mom who's able to be at home full time to be able to birth babies and care

00:37:33.360 | for them. Far, far better. Possibly you can have an easier time conceiving a child. Stress

00:37:41.840 | and tiredness and chronic sleep deprivation, those things can affect a woman's fertility.

00:37:47.080 | Many couples struggle with infertility. Perhaps that might be improved by your wife being

00:37:52.640 | more relaxed, having more time, being healthier, being able to sleep, being able to care for

00:37:58.280 | herself, eat quality food, etc. I don't know, but that might be something. Certainly, you

00:38:05.200 | have the opportunity for smoother, easier childbirth due to a lower stress lifestyle.

00:38:12.920 | Very difficult for a mother to work, work, work, work, okay it's 40 weeks and I'm going

00:38:17.000 | to work until I start to feel birth pains and then I'm just going to race to the hospital

00:38:21.480 | and have a baby. Decent formula right there for starting the process towards a difficult

00:38:27.360 | childbirth which ends in a very expensive medical bill for a C-section. Very C-section,

00:38:33.440 | extremely traumatic for a mother, difficult and traumatic for a baby. A lot of time to

00:38:38.320 | recover so now the experience of having a baby is a medical emergency, it's a trauma

00:38:44.560 | instead of something that a mom can recover from much more easily. If you can facilitate

00:38:50.400 | a lower stress, a more relaxed lifestyle, you have the opportunity for a smoother, easier

00:38:55.080 | childbirth which is good for mom. Mom can recover more quickly. Good for baby, the baby

00:39:00.240 | has less trauma at birth and a head start on growth. Really good for the lifelong bonding

00:39:06.640 | of mother and baby, especially in those first few days and then in that first year or two

00:39:10.880 | you have tremendous emotional stability of the baby due to mom's constant presence. Mom

00:39:17.280 | being there, breastfeeding, constantly involved in the life of the baby, a universal constant

00:39:23.920 | for that child makes an incredible impact on the child's emotional stability and also

00:39:29.440 | far healthier. Breastfeeding leads to far healthier baby, things like that. Healthier

00:39:33.640 | for baby and healthier for mom. Better hormone experience, joy, I can't remember the names

00:39:39.480 | of all the hormones but just much better experience for mom and much more opportunity to bond

00:39:45.640 | and I think less insulting. I've had friends who went back to work and they were super

00:39:52.120 | hardcore kind of crunchy people so they made sure that they were going to pump breast milk

00:40:01.080 | for their children and they did it, they do it but it just always seems kind of, I don't

00:40:06.680 | know, I really appreciate the mother's dedication and they're super dedicated to the health

00:40:11.600 | of their baby but it always just seems a little bit crass to me, this idea that a mom has

00:40:16.960 | to be sitting on her computer with a breast pump on her breast pumping milk in her office

00:40:23.800 | or in some quiet corner. It just seems really insulting, really artificial. Hats off to

00:40:32.160 | the moms that do it, they really work hard, it's really tough for them but it's never

00:40:35.840 | something I've wanted for my wife. I never wanted her to be in that weird circumstance.

00:40:39.240 | It's night and day different versus now, she can breastfeed a baby and sit in a quiet,

00:40:44.760 | comfortable chair, look out the window at a beautiful, tranquil scene and enjoy the

00:40:49.480 | sunshine and bond with her baby instead of trying to figure out how to be super mom.

00:40:55.360 | And then as children grow, the ability for a mom to focus fully on training children

00:41:00.760 | and investing into their self-development, I'm convinced that that constant presence

00:41:06.280 | of mom, especially in those early years, the most important time, babies and children need

00:41:12.360 | mom in those early years. They don't need dad, they need mom. They do need dad but not

00:41:19.240 | nearly as much as mom. Down the road they need dad more but in those early years they

00:41:23.000 | need their mom. And I'm convinced that that constant presence of a mom dramatically changes

00:41:28.080 | a child's self-confidence and sense of security. Now it's often, in my opinion, really draining

00:41:34.720 | on mom. Young children can be so draining which is why so many mothers are desperate

00:41:40.180 | to go back to work. They're really draining and they just call, "Mommy, mommy, mommy"

00:41:46.360 | all day. It really makes you feel worn down. But yet you can look at the flip side of it

00:41:51.680 | and see that constant presence, how that impacts the child where they don't even think about

00:41:57.040 | the, "Is mom not going to be there?" The reason they call mommy, mommy, mommy all the time

00:42:01.120 | is because mom's in constant universal presence. And as draining as that is, there's not a

00:42:08.040 | daycare worker in the world who's going to care more about your child than you do. There's

00:42:12.040 | not a kindergarten teacher in the world who's going to care more about your child than you

00:42:15.280 | do. What I try to encourage my wife is I say, "Listen, let's all acknowledge that children

00:42:22.840 | can be really draining. And as husbands, let's work really hard to make sure that our wives

00:42:27.400 | get the support that they need, the help that they need, the respite care that they need

00:42:32.420 | so that they can feel really good." But think about how draining it is for your children.

00:42:38.240 | "Mommy, mommy, mommy." Now imagine that you, instead of having one or two or three or four

00:42:45.120 | of little ones to care for, now imagine you've got 12 of them to care for all day, every

00:42:54.320 | day. And now instead of working for the good of your family, you're working for a fairly

00:42:58.520 | mediocre paycheck and you have no biological connection to those children. Is that person

00:43:04.520 | going to do a better job managing the stress and the frustration of the "mommy, mommy,

00:43:08.640 | mommy," the constant demands on their time and their emotions? Daycare workers try really,

00:43:14.560 | really hard. Teachers work really, really hard to be the best they can, but they simply

00:43:20.800 | cannot possibly care more than you. They have no biological connection to the children.

00:43:26.480 | They're working out of their natural sense of empathy and work. That has an impact on

00:43:30.880 | a child. So I'm convinced that that constant presence of a mom dramatically changes a child's

00:43:37.720 | self-confidence, which sets them up for a lifetime of success. You have far more opportunities

00:43:45.740 | for the children to enjoy interesting experiences. I think one of the biggest costs to young

00:43:51.700 | children when they're raised by institutional professionals instead of by moms and dads

00:43:58.000 | is the limitation on their experiences. Now there can come a point in time at which that

00:44:02.440 | can change. For example, let's say that your child is, your 12-year-old is really interested

00:44:07.640 | in science. Well, they're going to probably be able to get a far better equipped science

00:44:12.000 | lab at the local high school or the local private school than they are at home. The

00:44:17.240 | science lab equipment at home is probably going to be fairly minimal. But for a young

00:44:21.840 | child, the opportunities that are available for the child in an institution are very limited.

00:44:28.560 | It's one building, one campus, one room all day every day. And maybe there are four field

00:44:34.840 | trips per year, but it's nothing like the opportunity that a mother has to take her

00:44:39.400 | child out for interesting experiences. Of course, there's lots that can be done at home.

00:44:45.120 | And here's where financial, it's nice to have the money where you can buy interesting toys,

00:44:50.640 | have interesting games, have interesting activities for the child to do at home. But just the

00:44:55.040 | ability of time to go out on out of the house adventures, library trips, park trips, zoo

00:45:01.840 | trips, excursions, field trips, those things can be done every week. Most of the time,

00:45:07.440 | you know, your mom will get together with a play group of other moms and they have the

00:45:09.960 | ability to say every week, "Hey, we're going to go to the zoo. We're going to go to the

00:45:12.320 | park. We're going to go to the beach. We're going to go to do these activities." And so

00:45:16.800 | the child has a more interesting and diverse life experience than can be accomplished in

00:45:24.400 | the local daycare. Far more time to play with other children instead of it just being, daycare

00:45:31.520 | is a little bit questionable on this claim, but you have just more time to play with other

00:45:34.760 | children. If they have siblings, hopefully, more time to play with their siblings, more

00:45:39.040 | time to have play dates with other children at the park, etc. And then if you take a little

00:45:45.880 | bit more of a global interest in your educational plan, now all of a sudden you can really open

00:45:52.680 | up the opportunities. This is not simply possible with just, you know, mom staying at home.

00:45:59.640 | We get to entrepreneurship, which we'll get to as a point of freedom, but it is possible.

00:46:04.840 | My children have been to dozens of different states with a huge diversity and variety of

00:46:11.120 | experiences in all those different states, from the beaches to the mountains, from the

00:46:16.160 | alligators to the horses and the cattle, just tremendous experiences, all kinds of different

00:46:21.360 | things. One of my favorite activities to do with our children was, I took them, last year

00:46:25.200 | we took them to the Cheyenne Frontier Days in Cheyenne, Wyoming. It's an incredible experience

00:46:30.420 | for them, seeing all these horses and seeing the rodeo, which by the way, plug for Cheyenne

00:46:35.400 | Frontier Days. If you're looking for a big midway and whatnot, and you come from a big

00:46:40.080 | city as I do, you won't be impressed by the midway. But if you want to see horses and

00:46:44.320 | carriages and all the stuff you only see in books, you want to see it in real life, the

00:46:49.000 | Cheyenne Frontier Days parade was just incredible to me. It was so cool to see all the stuff

00:46:54.560 | that you only ever read about working. You know, it was the first time last year, it

00:46:59.120 | was the first time in my life I've ever seen a six horse team in person. So cool to see

00:47:03.160 | that. Six horse team pulling a stagecoach, or see a milk wagon, or see a funeral hearse,

00:47:09.600 | a horse drawn funeral hearse, just really enjoyed it. And to be able to sit there and

00:47:13.280 | watch your children stare in wonder at those things is a tremendous experience. My children

00:47:19.360 | have been in multiple foreign countries in multiple languages. You can do that when you've

00:47:24.720 | got time and that leads to a much bigger horizon than just being institutionalized. I'm stealing

00:47:32.640 | my thunder from the next show, which will be on home education. So I'm going to stop

00:47:36.960 | here. But you have tremendous opportunities for your children because mom has time. Simple

00:47:42.840 | things like learning, schooling. Let's move on to schooling of children. The world's greatest

00:47:48.760 | teacher student ratio, know what it is? One to one. Schools fight to try to lower their

00:47:56.360 | teacher student ratio because the idea is that if a teacher has 30 students to care

00:48:01.280 | for, they're going to be less effective than if they have 20 students. Maybe it's true.

00:48:05.120 | I don't know. Maybe it is. But if it is true, a one to one teacher to student ratio, or

00:48:13.320 | a three to one teacher to student ratio, if you have three children, is a far better ratio

00:48:20.160 | than 20 or 30 to one, which leads to amazing opportunities for the child. You don't have

00:48:25.800 | to know anything about child development. All you got to do is read to your kids and

00:48:29.760 | they'll be reading in no time. You don't need some fancy expensive, you know, private school

00:48:35.120 | tuition, some fancy early start education program. It all happens naturally if you create

00:48:41.320 | a proper environment. And then you have the opportunity to work with the needs of your

00:48:46.320 | children. So instead of your child being lumped in with everyone else, mom can focus and say,

00:48:52.120 | well, look, you're not learning well that way, but you can learn in this other way.

00:48:56.800 | Or you know, the prescription for you, active son, is you need 30 minutes of hard running

00:49:04.160 | around and play to every 10 minutes of bookwork. It's a lot better than the child going nuts

00:49:09.920 | trying to do 30 minutes of bookwork and only getting 10 minutes of play. You have far more

00:49:14.480 | interesting opportunities for learning. I'm not going to steal my thunder from the home

00:49:19.780 | education show, but time for small businesses. You know, my son's done things like building

00:49:24.640 | a little bread baking business. How else can you have a six year old be an entrepreneur

00:49:28.960 | and make money with learning to make money and save money and etc. If mom doesn't have

00:49:32.840 | time to help with that stuff. It's hard to do. Yeah, you can do it on Saturday, right?

00:49:37.000 | And I hope that you know my heart enough to know that every parent is going to do their

00:49:42.280 | very best. And so if you're the parent who, hey, we've got to have the two incomes, we're

00:49:48.600 | in a deep financial hole, we need the money. This is just what's best for our family. Fine.

00:49:52.880 | And so you're trying to figure out how to invest Saturday morning into your child. You

00:49:55.160 | can do it. You can help your child set up a bread baking business on Saturday morning.

00:49:59.480 | But if you're that parent, you got to admit, you'd be far more effective if you didn't

00:50:04.080 | have to simultaneously try to hold down a job while doing that. And you got to imagine

00:50:10.540 | that as good as you are as a parent with the 15 to 20 hours a week that you have available,

00:50:16.840 | you'd be a whole lot better at waking time. You'd be a whole lot better of a parent if

00:50:23.080 | you had 100 hours or 80 hours of waking time to parent your child. Then you have opportunities

00:50:34.680 | for better training. I have a strong willed child, disrespectful, rebellious, very challenging.

00:50:40.760 | I often wonder how that child would cope if it were being cared for by others. The child

00:50:46.120 | is exasperating enough. The child would drive other people completely bonkers. But yet,

00:50:53.440 | my wife and I, we have the time and the ability to work with the child, help the child to

00:50:58.440 | come under control, help the child to learn to manage their emotions. So for every challenge,

00:51:04.000 | it's better off if you got time and ability to focus. Imagine that you have a handicapped

00:51:10.120 | child, a legit handicap, whatever it is, difficult situation. Now, with the caveat

00:51:17.480 | of some institutions for certain handicaps have specialized equipment, which can be extremely

00:51:21.520 | valuable, you know as well as I do that you would never try to make the straight faced

00:51:28.200 | argument that somehow your handicap difficult child is better off because a paid professional

00:51:37.400 | is caring for them instead of you. I guess maybe that was too strong because again there

00:51:41.840 | are specialized equipment. But when you see moms and dads who have a handicapped child,

00:51:46.720 | it just focuses them in on saying I'm going to figure out how to get the very best results

00:51:51.540 | for this child. How do I help this child to learn in spite of their personal difficulties?

00:51:56.840 | And they pour themselves into that child. Well, if we do that for our handicapped children,

00:52:02.600 | why don't we do it for our non-handicapped children? If it would be that focusing for

00:52:08.440 | you to try to figure out how do I help my handicapped child deliver a more normal successful

00:52:14.280 | life in spite of their difficulties, then why do we not treat our so-called normal children

00:52:20.720 | with that same level of intensity and focus? Now, as I pivot to kind of my closing arguments

00:52:31.740 | and hopefully my motivational speech here, I do want to acknowledge that there's a real

00:52:36.400 | challenge with children where I gave a bunch of benefits of stay at home wife with no children,

00:52:42.200 | then children come in. Children increase the work and often increase the work beyond what

00:52:46.680 | is possible to maintain all of these things as efficiently as possible. So my wife and

00:52:51.000 | I, we have four children. What I have found, what we have found, as the size of our family

00:52:55.640 | has grown, we have less ability to do all those frugal things we once did. We have the

00:53:02.520 | need to start spending more money. I currently have a maid, I have a nanny. So the maid cleans

00:53:08.020 | the house, does the laundry, have a nanny, the nanny comes, plays with some of the children

00:53:12.360 | so that my wife can be freer to focus on the baby and to focus on the schooling, which

00:53:20.280 | just makes for a better lifestyle. And I'm very grateful that we have the money to do

00:53:23.960 | that. Not everybody does. So plan though, as your family grows, that you'll probably

00:53:29.200 | need to start spending more money for some of those things that perhaps your wife was

00:53:32.640 | once able to do. But then of course as your children grow, now they can take over some

00:53:36.500 | of those things. So just be careful that there are major financial costs to children and

00:53:42.040 | one of the major costs to children is that some of those other things fall away. You

00:53:46.440 | know, you wind up eating out more. If you don't have a paid cook, you wind up going

00:53:52.120 | and paying cooks at a restaurant to cook for you because you can't expect, if your wife

00:53:56.360 | is busy with children and homeschooling, etc., you can't expect her to be cooking all the

00:54:02.400 | time the same way that perhaps she could when she didn't have any children. So be very cautious

00:54:07.100 | there and be very in tune with those things and don't expect it to always be frugal. And

00:54:10.800 | in my opinion, it's one of the best things about money. Money should buy you lifestyle.

00:54:14.720 | And I'm grateful to have the money and have the ability to do that. It makes me really

00:54:17.980 | happy to see my wife with less work on her shoulders.

00:54:23.140 | My summary statements here are that you and your wife can have a far better quality of

00:54:29.760 | life and lifestyle if you're not both trying to hold down a job. My opinion, the family

00:54:38.560 | life of most modern American households sucks. Minimal time for each other, minimal time

00:54:45.780 | for children, have to work all the time to pay your taxes and to afford to be able to

00:54:51.780 | buy everything done for you. It just sucks and it's insanely expensive. And I know that

00:54:57.860 | most people don't like their jobs, they don't find satisfaction from them. And one of the

00:55:01.280 | ways that they could get a solution is what I'm talking about. That's why I'm doing this

00:55:05.200 | show about freedom. One path to freedom is what I'm talking about. If you have one spouse

00:55:10.840 | focused on the home front, the time that the family is together can be way, way better.

00:55:16.800 | All of a sudden, instead of your nights and your weekends filled with chores and activities

00:55:20.440 | and shopping, etc. Now all of a sudden, if your wife can do a lot of that stuff during

00:55:24.880 | the daytime hours, during the week, now your weekends open up. So instead of Saturday morning

00:55:30.140 | being the grocery shopping and yard work and work, work, work, work, you've got time for

00:55:34.600 | the beach, for the park, etc. Now instead of you having to come home and all of a sudden

00:55:39.680 | make dinner really quick, you can come home and play with your children. It can be an

00:55:43.320 | incredibly incredible lifestyle for dad and it can be an incredible lifestyle for mom.

00:55:50.880 | Not without problems, but I've often wondered why when you wander around the financial independence

00:55:55.840 | circles and everyone's really focused on financial independence, I've never read an essay that

00:56:01.600 | said become financially independent and stop working because you become a great wife and

00:56:09.920 | mother. My wife doesn't have an earning income. She's going to be supported for the rest of

00:56:16.240 | her life. Now there are risks there. One of the biggest things why marriage culture, divorce

00:56:21.200 | culture is so important, but she'll never have to earn an income for the rest of her

00:56:27.840 | life and yet she's got a tremendously valuable lifestyle. I've often read essays, a lot of

00:56:36.240 | times especially by women, I've often read essays by women who are pursuing financial

00:56:39.760 | independence and they talk about the things that they want to have time to do. I want

00:56:42.920 | to have time to exercise, cook healthier food, work on my art project and develop my calligraphy

00:56:47.800 | and have more time to spend with my parents, etc. My often obvious answer is why don't

00:56:55.280 | you marry a husband who would be thrilled for you to have that lifestyle. I love to

00:57:01.840 | see my wife fulfilled and have time for those things. It makes me feel really good to be

00:57:08.520 | able to provide a great lifestyle for her and I will happily work and earn income while

00:57:15.280 | we're not yet financially independent so that she can enjoy that. That's why I put this

00:57:22.120 | show next in the series, was when trying to figure out what order do I do this, I realized

00:57:30.520 | although the things I'm going to talk about later in the series are important. For example,

00:57:33.600 | I love being at home full time. You may be able to hear my children in the background

00:57:37.520 | talking in the other room. They're having their morning snack right now. I love being

00:57:41.480 | able to be home full time. My wife and I are home together with our children basically

00:57:45.880 | 168 hours a week. I don't know how you get more time with your family than that. And

00:57:53.000 | entrepreneurship and working from home, etc. has opened that up. But knowing what I know

00:57:59.760 | now, the first thing I would do would be to make that same decision we made for my wife

00:58:06.360 | to be home full time. I would have done it sooner before children and I would have done

00:58:11.800 | it and I would have made sure of it. And if I had to choose between both of us doing something

00:58:21.880 | that was going to take us outside of the house or me going and working a job, having to give

00:58:24.720 | up business so that my wife could be at home, I would go do the job instead of a business

00:58:28.560 | so that my wife could be at home. That's how good the experience has been for me. I think

00:58:33.080 | the quality of life and the family life of most of modern American households stinks,

00:58:37.480 | but it doesn't have to. You can have a better home that's more beautiful, that's cleaner,

00:58:46.120 | that you like to be in, that's more pleasant, that's filled with love and joy. Give your

00:58:51.400 | wife the time to do that. The money to buy the things that are necessary, but the time

00:58:56.280 | to do that. You can eat better, have cheaper food, healthier, better. You can have better

00:59:02.520 | children who are more emotionally stable, they're smarter, they have better self-esteem,

00:59:07.040 | have a better vocabulary. You can have better weekends, better nights. Your nights and your

00:59:12.200 | weekends don't have to be consumed with chores all the time. You can have an easier time

00:59:17.760 | scheduling your family life. One of the biggest benefits that I love about our lifestyle is

00:59:24.320 | that it's easy for us to do family scheduling. The only schedule we have to work around is

00:59:29.520 | my work schedule. But beyond that, because the children are homeschooled, my wife is

00:59:34.480 | at home, it's easy for us to schedule. I guess I was too much there. We do have to

00:59:41.400 | deal with homeschool co-op a little bit with some of our commitments there, but those things

00:59:44.800 | are very light compared to the average scheduling constraint to the modern American family.

00:59:49.080 | So if we want to go somewhere, we just go. I pick a week and I go. I usually talk with

00:59:53.760 | my wife about it in advance, obviously, but we don't pick certain days based upon how

00:59:58.420 | much PTO she has from her job. We just go. And I pick the days based upon my work obligations.

01:00:04.800 | Even just all the other stuff. Husbands, you can have a far better sex life if you have

01:00:10.360 | a stay-at-home wife who has time, is relaxed, is energetic, has the ability to take a nap,

01:00:18.000 | has the ability to handle her responsibilities, isn't frustrated and stressed out about her

01:00:21.320 | boss yelling at her at work. So you have far better opportunities for a strong family life,

01:00:26.960 | for a more fulfilling personal life, and you have far better opportunities for career success

01:00:33.480 | and for big financial gains if you're freer to work on your career.

01:00:41.040 | Now I want to answer a couple of specific questions and give you some suggestions on

01:00:44.800 | practical steps of how do you achieve some of this lifestyle freedom. If this makes sense

01:00:49.680 | to you, if you see what I've experienced of lifestyle freedom, you may have the desire

01:00:54.080 | to do it. But then of course we're up against the financial constraints. So you think about

01:00:57.880 | what about working from home and home businesses? You know, and this is especially with a lot

01:01:04.400 | of moms. It's one of the reasons why many moms get involved in MLMs, they get involved

01:01:10.560 | in online things, blogging, you know, things like that. Because they're trying to figure

01:01:14.720 | out how do I stay financially productive while I'm at home? And that's not easy, right?

01:01:23.120 | First, there are lots of legitimate work from home things that can be done. They totally

01:01:28.360 | are. And I love working from home. I work from home, so you can too. It can be tough

01:01:34.800 | to build. It took me a lot of years to figure out how to do it, but it is possible. And

01:01:39.440 | I think that those things are really excellent opportunities, especially if there are no

01:01:43.320 | young children in the house. If you have the ability for anybody to get a job where you

01:01:48.000 | can work from home, some or all the time, or to have a business where you can work from

01:01:51.880 | home, I think it's well worth pursuing. One of the things that I observed growing up,

01:01:56.440 | my dad was a traditional engineer with a traditional office, but he often worked from home. And

01:02:00.600 | that gave him tremendous flexibility. This was in the days where it was just barely a

01:02:04.480 | thing. And so I think that's really, really great. I personally don't see how it's possible

01:02:10.200 | to hold down a great job or build a business and simultaneously care for young children.

01:02:14.600 | I know there are moms who do it. I know there are dads who do it. I don't know how it's

01:02:18.440 | possible. When I look at the tremendous time required and emotional energy, and I try to

01:02:23.840 | imagine myself as a stay-at-home dad with just my children to care for, and I try to

01:02:28.960 | imagine how I would do it, I couldn't do it with young children. I could do it with children

01:02:33.000 | who are old enough to sit at a desk and do their schoolwork with just minimal supervision.

01:02:36.960 | That starts what, second, third grade probably. I could do it with children old enough to

01:02:41.640 | work in a family business. I couldn't do it with babies. And I think that that's a very

01:02:46.220 | difficult burden to put on your wife. If you expect her to be a good mother, don't try

01:02:50.040 | to make her be a good mother and a super businesswoman at the same time. Some people do it. I don't

01:02:56.760 | know how. I've never been able to figure out how. But if you can build a work-from-home

01:03:02.600 | business, I think that's fantastic. I think a family business can be even better, a family

01:03:06.920 | where everyone can be involved. Dad, mom, children is really, really worth building.

01:03:11.560 | And one of the benefits of having some kind of business like that is that it can be a

01:03:16.120 | good option both ways, for mom to be able to have some contact with adults, but also

01:03:22.000 | to still be available with children. One of the most difficult things that you've got

01:03:25.720 | to work for is it's very draining to be with young children all the day. Talk to a mom

01:03:29.480 | of young kids and she'll be grateful to be able to sit down and have coffee with an adult

01:03:33.200 | and be able to have the times. And so I think one of the biggest things that you should

01:03:37.320 | do as you're trying to lead your family is work to make that happen. Work to make it

01:03:42.400 | happen so that she has a break. And that can really be a big deal for her happiness, for

01:03:48.320 | her health, for her mental health, etc. So there are opportunities in working from home

01:03:53.600 | and home businesses, but I'm not going to do it too much. We'll talk a little bit in

01:03:57.960 | a section on entrepreneurship. I don't think it's necessary. I think that sometimes there's

01:04:03.120 | so many things of savings that can be done without them being as demanding as trying

01:04:07.420 | to work every day during the kid's nap time, that there's plenty of financial abilities

01:04:11.800 | for your wife to be financially productive. I personally don't ever want to be in a position

01:04:16.820 | where I had to force her and say, "You have to work from home." There are things I think

01:04:21.920 | that are better suited to the benefits of working from home. So what I would try to

01:04:25.160 | do if we needed, if I needed my wife to be more financially productive, but we wanted

01:04:29.920 | her to be able to be at home, I would try very hard to have her more in the vein of

01:04:35.280 | handling investments, renting out a home, managing our investment properties, handling

01:04:41.680 | Airbnb listings, something like that where the work is not, where you have to sit down

01:04:46.560 | for three solid hours every single day, where the work can be worked around in a few minutes

01:04:50.320 | here and there, just because I think that would be better for the home environment,

01:04:54.920 | for her ability to get the work done effectively.

01:04:57.240 | Now one of the big questions, especially that a lot of men face is, "What if your wife doesn't

01:05:05.080 | want to stay at home? What if she says, 'I find the home environment draining. I don't

01:05:10.800 | like it. I feel confined. I want to talk with adults. I want to build my career.' What do

01:05:16.200 | you do in that situation?" It's a really tough question. I personally feel like I dodged

01:05:21.800 | a bullet on this particular topic in choosing my wife. Prior to being married, prior to

01:05:29.760 | this experience, this particular thing we're talking about wasn't really all that important

01:05:33.160 | to me previously. I didn't think much about it. I was young, so you expect young people

01:05:36.760 | not to think too much about it, but I didn't think much about it. Several of the girls

01:05:40.600 | that I was interested in when I was younger, before my wife and I got together, had very

01:05:45.380 | significant career ambitions. Two of them are now doctors. I've often thought to myself,

01:05:50.280 | "What on earth would I do if I were married to a doctor?" You can imagine how difficult

01:05:55.880 | it is for those ladies. This has been their dream, both of the girls, my personal acquaintances.

01:06:04.160 | Their dream from the time they were little girls was to be a doctor. They invested years

01:06:09.880 | and years of blood, sweat, tears, and treasure into becoming a doctor, built these big careers,

01:06:17.360 | and earning lots of money. Imagine you're a woman in that situation. Let's say you go

01:06:22.640 | through college, get out of college at 22, go to medical school, get out of residency,

01:06:26.800 | and there you are in your late 20s. For the first time, you're finally able to earn some

01:06:31.360 | money. You start earning some money, but you know you want to have children. You've basically

01:06:35.160 | got a biological cap of 40 years old to have children, and yet you're finally starting

01:06:40.480 | to earn an income, finally, after years and decades of work. Are you going to walk away

01:06:50.120 | from that to be home with your children? Most can't. They just can't do that because of

01:06:56.540 | all the time that they have invested in it. Most aren't. I've often thought, "What if

01:07:01.200 | I were a husband in that situation? What would I do?" The problem is that as a husband, if

01:07:05.600 | you're a good husband, you want to support your wife in all of her ambitions and goals.

01:07:10.240 | You want her to have the richest, most fulfilling life that she can possibly imagine, and you

01:07:14.840 | want to lay down your life to help her do that. Today, one of the challenges is that

01:07:19.960 | many women have major career goals, major ambitions related to that. Here you are as

01:07:27.280 | a husband. You want to support your wife. You want her to live a rich and fulfilling

01:07:31.320 | life, and she's got these major career goals, but you also have family goals. You sit down

01:07:38.880 | and you say, "How do I make these things work?" Really, really tough. Really tough. I have

01:07:44.880 | often think, just the other night in preparing for the show, I was telling my wife, talking

01:07:48.120 | about the outline of what I was planning to talk about. We were talking about it, and

01:07:51.360 | I just said again, "I am so grateful that I never married those two girls that became

01:07:56.760 | doctors because I don't know what I would do, and it would really be difficult for me."

01:08:01.920 | Obviously, one of the simple things you can do is choose. One of the things that I have

01:08:06.600 | most come to value about my wife is that she never had big career ambitions. Her goal was

01:08:15.000 | not, "How can I get married as quickly as possible so that I can be a mom with children?"

01:08:18.200 | That wasn't her at all, but she just didn't have a lot of big career ambitions. For her,

01:08:23.120 | the cost of being a full-time wife and mom was not related to careers.

01:08:31.000 | I don't think if you're a husband, you're in this situation, I don't think you can force

01:08:34.040 | your wife into something. I think that's a recipe for disaster. It's disrespectful and

01:08:40.680 | really, really difficult in that situation. I hope that I've given some ideas that might

01:08:45.640 | possibly be able to persuade her, to help her to see something. One of the things that

01:08:51.480 | I have observed today is that many women just simply don't have a concept of what they could

01:08:56.940 | do in their family and personal life with time and flexibility. Same problem that both

01:09:01.180 | men and women face when thinking about retirement. They don't quite know what to do with it.

01:09:05.840 | If you talk to many women who've been raised with career ambitions as the first and foremost

01:09:10.240 | thing, "You go, girl. You got to build your career. You got to be independent." They have

01:09:13.480 | big career ambitions, but they don't have the ability to see what good they could do

01:09:20.280 | as a wife and a mother and what would be the benefit of that kind of lifestyle. They don't

01:09:24.680 | see all those things that I could talk about. They don't see how they could contribute to

01:09:28.400 | the family without just holding down a full-time job. Many women face this challenge. They

01:09:34.320 | want to contribute to the family and so they think, "I got to work and I got to earn an

01:09:37.840 | income." Yet, there's lots and lots of ways to contribute to a family that don't involve

01:09:42.080 | work outside the home and an income. I would try to talk about some of those things. I

01:09:48.600 | think that if you're in a situation like that, I think that there are some wives where if

01:09:53.960 | you showed them how meaningful their impact could be, they might love the opportunity

01:10:01.520 | to be a full-time wife, full-time mother. They might really appreciate that. If you

01:10:06.800 | can demonstrate that you would really value that, I think there are a lot of girls in

01:10:10.920 | the middle that would really go for that. Not all. Again, this show is never going to

01:10:17.240 | persuade somebody who's ideologically committed to, "Got to earn an income. Got to be independent.

01:10:22.000 | Got to make more than my husband," etc. But I think my experience has been that there

01:10:25.560 | are a lot of girls who would love the ability to have that more relaxed lifestyle, to invest

01:10:31.320 | into their home and their family and to making it awesome and beautiful and meaningful. I

01:10:38.000 | think that there are a lot of husbands, my experience, a lot of husbands who really love

01:10:41.320 | it. It makes them feel really good to be able to support their wife in that way.

01:10:46.200 | But if you can live a... So talk about it. Talk to your wife. At the end of the day,

01:10:51.840 | every single couple in these things has to decide what's best for them. And there's

01:10:57.400 | no place that any of us have to go into to dig into and try to control another couple.

01:11:04.140 | This is the most intimate relationship you can have. And I think it has to be worked

01:11:07.660 | out between a husband and wife. My goal is just simply to provide some ideas that can

01:11:11.780 | possibly show how much I've benefited by having a life arrangement in this particular way.

01:11:20.020 | What if you can live a great life and still both work? Well, I think you can. And I think

01:11:24.860 | that, especially if you don't have children, I think that obviously that's an opportunity.

01:11:29.620 | You take children out of the mix, and I still think there are benefits. I gave through that

01:11:34.300 | long list of benefits. But if you take children out of the mix, then I think you have the

01:11:39.160 | opportunity to both still work and to live a great life. What I would say is that what

01:11:44.160 | you should try to do there is streamline your life as much as possible and try to find some

01:11:49.500 | efficient ways to get some of those benefits. So for example, easier for you to live an

01:11:55.580 | efficient life if you live in a small apartment and still have time on the weekends. One of

01:11:59.580 | the things I didn't anticipate until I went through it was when my wife and I married,

01:12:03.100 | we lived in a little tiny studio apartment. So we had to clean the house. But we had one

01:12:06.900 | bathroom to clean, and we had the studio that we swept. So about 15 minutes, we could do

01:12:12.740 | the whole housework. I'd go and clean the bathroom. My wife would sweep, finish the

01:12:17.220 | dishes. Boom, we're done. And then we can go and do our things. So recognize that freedom

01:12:22.580 | can be achieved in many ways. So you can achieve personal freedom with things like living a

01:12:27.440 | minimalist lifestyle. So you don't have to have all those things tearing you down, those

01:12:31.980 | things holding you down and restricting your freedom. Those are choices. So nothing in

01:12:38.420 | this kind of analysis is either/or. There are many ways to achieve this kind of freedom.

01:12:43.940 | And so look for that. Now, I've thus far, I've generally used the term stay-at-home

01:12:50.940 | wife, and I've assumed that a husband would be the one generating an income and the wife

01:12:55.660 | would be at home. And in the modern world, this is a very scandalous assumption to make.

01:13:04.420 | When I conclude this show, if any listeners have gotten to this point, usually they just

01:13:08.420 | turn off and leave a review about Joshua's, you know, sexist, etc. But sometimes they

01:13:12.460 | write me an email and say, "You use just such total sexist language." I don't worry much

01:13:17.260 | about that. But I do want to answer the question, though, because there are a lot of listeners

01:13:20.900 | who are in a situation where their wife earns a much bigger income, has a much bigger career.

01:13:27.020 | And I've often thought, "Okay, what if I were married to one of those girls that became

01:13:30.260 | a doctor? What would I do? Would I be the stay-at-home husband?" I've thought a lot

01:13:35.900 | about that. And all I can do is say, is just say, "May God give you wisdom in your situation

01:13:44.300 | to do the very best things." My personality and temperament is such that in a lot of ways,

01:13:50.260 | I would love to be a full-time stay-at-home dad. Frankly, I am. I'm a full-time stay-at-home

01:13:56.340 | dad. I just also am running a business. So, I love the opportunity of doing things with

01:14:03.020 | children. I really love it. It is so fun to me to work on, you know, children's educational

01:14:08.940 | products and projects. So fun for me to think about, "Okay, where could we go this week

01:14:13.100 | and go to the museum and then the park and what could we do?" I think it's fun. I enjoy

01:14:19.420 | all of the domestic stuff. In my household, I do a lot of the cooking because I enjoy

01:14:23.580 | cooking. My wife doesn't enjoy cooking. And I think it's so fun to... I'm that guy who

01:14:27.820 | likes to learn a new recipe and make something new and whatnot. And so, I would thrive personally

01:14:34.180 | as a full-time stay-at-home dad. I'm unconvinced that that's the best solution for young children

01:14:41.260 | unless it's just clearly the solution that needs to be made. I really think that young

01:14:44.980 | children need mom. Dad is better than a daycare worker. So, if that's the only feasible financial

01:14:51.100 | solution or that's the only feasible solution based upon the unique peculiarities of a family,

01:14:56.340 | dad is better than a daycare worker. So, if we talked it through and we decided that,

01:15:02.500 | "No, this is... my wife's career is more important or due to these personal constraints or she's

01:15:09.660 | made these commitments or whatever the details are," I would do that. I would stop working

01:15:17.180 | and I would go and be with my children because I believe that I can make a far bigger impact

01:15:21.700 | with my family and with my children if I have the opportunity to build into them the way

01:15:27.660 | that I want to build into them than if I'm working in an office all the time. So, if

01:15:32.940 | it's a choice between mom or dad, I think mom is generally better. If it's a choice

01:15:38.020 | between dad or daycare worker, walk away from the money, take care of your children. You're

01:15:44.180 | going to really value that investment that you make in your children. So, may God give

01:15:48.460 | you wisdom in that situation. Now, to close, how do you make the transition? Let's say

01:15:52.900 | that you... something of what I've said has been appealing and you're like, "Yeah, Joshua

01:15:57.060 | actually would be nice. We would enjoy that family freedom in some way if we chose to

01:16:03.860 | do that." But yet, we really aren't sure about the financial planning. We're not... we're

01:16:07.500 | really not sure about how to do that. So, I'll give you just some suggestions. Number

01:16:11.740 | one, you've got to talk about it. Talk about it together and be honest with one another.

01:16:18.660 | My experience is a tremendous level of dishonesty about this subject in the world abroad. When

01:16:25.060 | I was in college, I never would have told a girl, "I want to stay at home wife," because

01:16:29.980 | I would have feared that I would be perceived as not with the times, not hip with the times,

01:16:35.380 | right? And that's a fear that a lot of people have. I think it's especially difficult on

01:16:40.100 | women because I think there are a lot of women who fear saying to somebody, "I want to be

01:16:46.100 | a stay-at-home mom. It would make me happy to be a stay-at-home mom and to care for you,

01:16:49.860 | my husband." That's not popular in today's world. That's a very difficult statement to

01:16:55.220 | make publicly. And so, because of those fears, I think people often suppress the desire and

01:17:01.340 | they often suppress the conversation about it. So, if I can do nothing other than potentially

01:17:06.980 | stimulate a conversation in your marriage about what you and your spouse would really

01:17:11.380 | like and how you would really like to live, I'm happy with that. But you've got to be

01:17:16.220 | honest. Honest for both sides. As a man, I love having a wife who's only concerned about

01:17:27.340 | me and our family. That is awesome. If I'm picky... My wife died and I had to choose

01:17:34.420 | a new wife. And I had the choice to choose between a woman who said, "Joshua, if you'll

01:17:40.020 | provide for me, if you'll meet my needs, if you'll love me, if you'll care for me and

01:17:44.140 | you'll be faithful for me, I'll just spend my time and energy focused on your well-being,

01:17:51.060 | on our family goals, on our family businesses, and we'll be totally joined in those goals

01:17:56.620 | and my goal is to support you." Versus, I'm choosing a woman who says, "Well, I love you

01:18:02.620 | and I want to be together with you and I want to be an equal partner, but I also want to

01:18:05.980 | build this independent career and go and serve an independent boss. I'll choose option one

01:18:11.180 | all the time." It is awesome to be a husband and to feel that way. And I believe it gives

01:18:16.700 | you a much greater loyalty in a relationship and a much greater sense of loyalty. You

01:18:23.620 | know, my wife has taken a tremendous personal risk to ally herself with me. When a woman

01:18:30.860 | walks away from a career, it's a tremendous personal risk, especially in the modern divorce

01:18:36.300 | culture because there are multiple costs associated with that. The first obvious cost is that,

01:18:42.860 | you know, my wife, when she stopped working, she lost a lot of her connections in the job

01:18:47.100 | force, etc. She loses her independent income, which is obviously a tremendous, you know,

01:18:53.380 | piece of vulnerability. Prior to that, she had income, she could do whatever she wanted

01:18:57.060 | with it. Well, now she's dependent on my income. That's a very vulnerable place for her to

01:19:01.780 | be in. In addition, that cost goes on down the road. So, for example, let's say that

01:19:07.460 | my wife works really hard, diligently raising our children, and then 20 years from now decides

01:19:14.460 | to go back in the workforce. The cost of her leaving the workforce has a financial cost

01:19:18.980 | for the rest of her life because it's unlikely that she'll enter the workforce at the same

01:19:23.300 | place as where a woman who stayed working in a career the whole time did. It's very

01:19:28.020 | unlikely. And so there's tremendous financial costs and it's a place of insecurity for a

01:19:32.420 | woman, which is one of the reasons why I'm very hardcore about men being responsible

01:19:40.180 | to provide for their wives and to care for their wives. I don't like, it's one of the

01:19:44.660 | reasons I don't like doing divorce planning. Not that there's not a place, there are women

01:19:48.500 | who take advantage of men, lots of them, but I believe that men have a responsibility to

01:19:52.500 | care for their wives and to provide for them for life. So there's a tremendous risk that

01:19:58.420 | your wife takes. Now, I think there are plenty of rewards that make more than make up for

01:20:04.180 | it. As a husband, I'm far more, I feel far more loving towards my wife, knowing that

01:20:12.980 | she's been willing to do that for me. And I think it makes our relationship far deeper

01:20:18.180 | than if she were competing with me and trying to say, "Well, I'm going to earn more than

01:20:21.260 | you are and we're going to have this separate things." If I didn't feel like my wife was

01:20:25.740 | fully invested in our place as a family, I'd feel like I was competing with her boss, her

01:20:31.580 | career, and that would make me feel less loving towards her and would diminish the bond that

01:20:36.460 | we have in our relationship. So it goes both ways. I guess my encouragement to you is to

01:20:41.900 | be honest. I'm doing my best to model that for you, speaking honestly from my experience,

01:20:46.500 | but my encouragement to you is to be honest. And then for women as well, if you have a

01:20:51.700 | desire to be a stay-at-home mom, be honest about it. And one of the things that I've

01:20:55.860 | observed over the years is I worked with a couple, a handful, a couple of clients where

01:21:02.820 | the man would say to me privately, "I need my wife to make more money. She's just not

01:21:07.660 | producing enough." And men didn't acknowledge the contributions of their wife in the household

01:21:13.620 | and they wanted their wife to produce more. And often that cultural sense, that fact that

01:21:18.900 | many women, many wives don't see a way to contribute to their household or to their

01:21:22.540 | marriages unless they're earning an income. Often they're just short-sighted, they haven't

01:21:26.860 | had it modeled. You know, dad and mom both went to work every day and so the way that

01:21:30.420 | you contribute is you go to work every day. This is a different experience. But if you

01:21:35.020 | want something different, be honest and talk about it. It sounds dumb, I mean it just sounds

01:21:40.580 | simple, but that's the key is I think starting with being honest and talking about it. In

01:21:47.860 | addition, I hope I've given you a few ideas to see how if you're a woman who wants to

01:21:51.500 | be a stay-at-home wife, you've got an opportunity to really contribute to your household. And

01:21:56.820 | you've got a really important job. The ability, again, the family life that most people have

01:22:03.500 | experienced, latchkey children and whatnot, you know, our parents' generation invented

01:22:07.740 | this idea of quality time. I think quality time is a complete farce. I think it's utterly

01:22:13.020 | stupid. And I think that it was invented by our parents who were going into the dual income

01:22:18.100 | kind of career world and they were trying to figure out a way to absolve their consciences

01:22:22.260 | of their guilt of the fact that they weren't seeing their children. They institutionalized

01:22:25.300 | their children and they weren't going to see them. And so they came up with this idea,

01:22:28.100 | "Well, I don't have quantity time with my children, but I have quality time." I think

01:22:31.900 | it's total bunk. My experience as a father, there's no such thing as quality time. The

01:22:36.020 | most important conversations always come at the weirdest times. You know, you're strapping

01:22:42.780 | your child into a car seat, you're late for a dinner appointment, and all of a sudden

01:22:46.220 | your child's staring at the sky and, you know, the Twitter joke. Last night, my two-year-old

01:22:52.420 | said, "Daddy, what is the meaning of life?" Well, that's the kind of stuff that happens

01:22:56.060 | all the time as a parent. You know, your child will express some deep-seated fear at the

01:23:00.300 | weirdest time. And yet, if you're not there, you don't get those chances. You don't get

01:23:04.500 | those opportunities. They'll ask a question that turns out to be a really important question,

01:23:08.940 | but if you're not there, you don't get those opportunities. Years ago, I listened to a

01:23:13.980 | Brian Tracy seminar on parenting and he said, "It's quality of time at work that counts

01:23:19.280 | and quantity of time at home." And I've always grabbed onto that. It's like, that's good.

01:23:24.260 | That's true. At work, I can be efficient and productive. And at work, I can multitask and

01:23:29.340 | I can hire things done. It's quality of time at work that makes a difference, but it's

01:23:33.860 | quantity of time at home that makes the difference. But because many of us haven't had much of

01:23:39.660 | an example of what a pleasant home environment was like, of what it was like to have a place

01:23:45.100 | where everyone wanted to be and everyone wanted to be together because relationships were

01:23:48.060 | fractured and stress and tension and fights were all around the place. We didn't see that,

01:23:52.740 | but that doesn't have to be you. If you're a woman and you're in that situation, you

01:23:57.220 | can learn how to build those things. You can learn how to build a house that your family

01:24:02.180 | wants to be in. You can learn how to build relationships of peace and harmony among your

01:24:06.740 | children. And if it costs you money in your career, I think you'll get benefits from it

01:24:12.620 | down the road. If not in financial support, at least in love and in rich relationships.

01:24:19.900 | It's very difficult for a family where everyone is institutionalized. Dad works in his institution.

01:24:26.060 | Mom works in her institution. Children are in their institutions and they're together

01:24:30.100 | for a short period of time out of convenience. It's very difficult for that family to all

01:24:35.260 | of a sudden magically 30 years later, build some kind of close family culture. What'll

01:24:40.660 | happen is dad will be institutionalized in the nursing home. Mom will be institutionalized

01:24:45.860 | in the nursing home and the children will be institutionalized in their jobs while they

01:24:50.420 | institutionalize the grandchildren and something else. So if you want a different family culture

01:24:54.540 | when you're 80, you're going to have to work differently at it when you're 30. At least

01:24:59.540 | that's what I see. Now, if you talk about it and you decide, you know what, in our family

01:25:03.980 | we would like to have a stay at home parent. We would like mom or dad to stay at home.

01:25:09.060 | If you're going to, how are we going to do it? Well, my answer is if you're going to

01:25:11.540 | do it, just decide and do it. I'm convinced that this is far more of a personal ideological

01:25:19.760 | decision based upon something that you see and that you want than it is a planning decision.

01:25:27.600 | You may not be able to afford it where you are right now. So you do need to look at the

01:25:31.860 | numbers, but if you're going to do it, just make the necessary changes to do it. I'm at

01:25:37.100 | this point ideologically committed to this lifestyle. So it's not a matter of technical

01:25:43.820 | question, et cetera. I would give up on $2 million of extra wealth at retirement in order

01:25:50.200 | to live this lifestyle. Maybe I have, I don't know. I don't think so because I'd still believe

01:25:54.980 | that I have much more opportunities to be financially productive because I have a stay

01:25:58.660 | at home wife. But if you said, Joshua, the cost is for you to have $2 million less at

01:26:02.900 | retirement age, but you can have all these benefits that you're experiencing with a stay

01:26:07.040 | at home wife and a strong family culture, et cetera, I would do it. If I had to move

01:26:11.660 | to a cheaper place, I would do it. If I had to move out of a fancy neighborhood into a

01:26:16.540 | cheap neighborhood to afford it or move from an expensive city to a rural town where there's

01:26:23.420 | far fewer opportunities for me to earn a lot of money, I would do it because I'm ideologically

01:26:28.580 | committed. It's a presupposition. It's a pre-commitment to the money. Now you may not be there, obviously.

01:26:35.300 | So what you need to do is look at the numbers and think about what would I be willing to

01:26:38.900 | do to make this happen? If you see it as important, you will figure out a way to do it. Now only

01:26:45.900 | a few people though are going to be in a situation where it would be a really big financial cost.

01:26:52.260 | Most couples aren't making $400,000 a year each of them. Most couples have at least one

01:27:00.260 | income in the house that's far more modest. And when you calculate the cost of working,

01:27:04.460 | as I've talked about in separate shows, and you calculate the opportunities for more financial

01:27:08.540 | efficiency through this type of lifestyle, I think you have more opportunities. If you

01:27:16.300 | want it, you can figure out a way to do it. Remember that not working in a job doesn't

01:27:23.060 | mean that you have to be non-productive. It's kind of interesting. I, for a long time in

01:27:30.220 | the financial independence or the retirement space, the FIRE movement, I have stated the

01:27:36.380 | position publicly that I'm not a fan of the FIRE movement because to me it's just too

01:27:41.420 | much of a focus on unproductivity and kind of indolence and laziness. This idea that

01:27:46.260 | while I was working, now I'm just going to sit back and engage in doing nothing. And

01:27:51.060 | I don't see the point. I think you should be productive for health and for impact and

01:27:55.660 | for meaning in life. You should be productive. So many people have said, "Joshua, you're

01:28:01.380 | wrong. I'm pursuing financial independence because... but I'm not going to be unproductive.

01:28:05.340 | I've got all these things I want to do." But ironically, when I talk about the value of

01:28:10.780 | having a stay-at-home wife, when I talk about that, people often just assume it's a place

01:28:15.460 | of unproductivity and they can't imagine how that's a better thing for her and how she

01:28:19.620 | can still be productive. So don't do that. If you're going to look at ways that you can

01:28:24.300 | be productive. And productivity is not exclusively related to children. Again, community involvement

01:28:30.500 | and things like that. Many moms have made a massive difference in community projects,

01:28:36.220 | etc. because they had the time and the energy to devote to those things because they weren't

01:28:39.940 | working for a paycheck all the time. So look at the costs, but just look at how you can

01:28:47.580 | make up the value on the back end. Practical tip. If you're getting married or newly married

01:28:53.660 | or you're trying to make this work just as a transition period, just commit to living

01:28:58.260 | on one income. Ideally, commit to living on one income from the very start. It's one of

01:29:02.580 | the things that my wife and I did do well, is we just, from the very beginning, we put

01:29:06.020 | her income in a separate bank account and we saved all of it. So if you already know

01:29:10.580 | that you can live as a family on one income, do it. And it'll make your decision a lot

01:29:16.100 | easier. So if you're trying to figure out, well, how do we make this transition? Maybe

01:29:19.220 | for six months from now, our goal is to make a transition six months from now. Well, commit

01:29:23.980 | to living on one income and start to learn the skills now. Just like when you're starting

01:29:27.940 | a business, you do the same kind of chicken entrepreneurship. Just do it. Live on one

01:29:31.940 | income from the very start. My closing statement. I have often wondered if the dual income lifestyle

01:29:42.780 | is a giant conspiracy. As far as I can tell, the only people who benefit from the modern

01:29:52.220 | dual income household are tax collectors and government agents. Because what happens is,

01:30:01.980 | in the modern dual income household, you have a far higher level of tax collection. Instead

01:30:07.620 | of a mom doing all these things within her own household, growing food to support her

01:30:13.340 | family, cooking meals at home, caring for children, educating children, etc. What happens

01:30:21.420 | is that mom goes to work. And so that immediately creates employment taxes and income taxes

01:30:26.940 | for the government based upon her work there. Then she has to use after tax dollars to pay

01:30:32.300 | for all those things. So then that goes in and instead of cooking a meal at home, we

01:30:36.940 | pay for food in a restaurant. Instead of growing money, growing a garden, then now we pay for

01:30:43.140 | food out. And so that creates sales taxes. And it creates more income taxes. Because

01:30:47.580 | instead of neighbors trading among neighbors, and maybe your wife grows green beans and

01:30:52.820 | the old guy next door grows tomatoes and they trade back and forth with a tax free barter

01:30:57.020 | exchange, now all of a sudden everything goes through the financial system. It creates more

01:31:01.060 | and more value, more and more tax revenue. And then when children are institutionalized,

01:31:06.660 | then they're automatically taught groupthink. They're automatically taught to all think

01:31:10.180 | the same way, to respond the same way, to stimulate. They're all taught to believe the

01:31:14.380 | same things. These are the doctrines that you need to know. And their love of learning

01:31:18.420 | is beaten out of them. And they basically are created into robots who easily move into

01:31:24.060 | factory jobs. So the children become much more easily governable, much more easily managed

01:31:30.460 | in a managerial society. They have far less of an ability to be a free thinker, to make

01:31:36.100 | decisions for themselves, to think creatively about their situations. And you create a much

01:31:40.580 | more easily governed society. I guess the third person that benefits, I forgot, so you

01:31:45.820 | got tax collectors and government agents who run a society. And then the third person that

01:31:49.740 | benefits would be corporate employers. That basically automatically, prior to the revolution

01:31:54.820 | into dual income households, in general you could have a dad who would earn enough money

01:32:00.420 | to support his family with his wife at home. Well, what do you do if you automatically

01:32:05.300 | double the supply of workers, where both mom and dad now are part of the workforce? Basically

01:32:10.180 | what you do is you halve the cost of labor. And so now the corporate business owners and

01:32:16.620 | corporate titans have basically halved the cost of labor. And so you have this society

01:32:23.700 | where the people who don't benefit are the dad and the mom and the children. They don't

01:32:28.380 | benefit really in any way, except this kind of ethereal, mystical sense of independence

01:32:34.940 | and financial independence and you go girl and be an independent woman and et cetera.

01:32:41.500 | Feel free to take that if you want it. I don't see it. So I've often wondered, is this whole

01:32:45.520 | thing just some giant conspiracy? Now, I don't actually believe it's a giant conspiracy,

01:32:52.540 | but it would not surprise me in an instant if you told me it was and you presented some

01:32:56.660 | kind of compelling proof. Either way, you can look at the results of it and say, "This

01:33:02.420 | lifestyle really stinks. It's no fun." And yet, you don't have to live it.

01:33:12.380 | One of the most impactful books I've read in the last few years was Anthony Esalen's

01:33:16.220 | book Out of the Ashes. If you haven't read it, I commend it to you. But in his first

01:33:20.140 | chapter he talks about the rubble. He talks about the rubble that is our modern society.

01:33:26.180 | I read you an extensive passage of it in a previous episode. If you haven't gotten it,

01:33:29.900 | read it. Read Out of the Ashes. And one of the things that he says on page 10 of chapter

01:33:36.580 | 1 called The Rubble, he says, "We are incompetent in the ordinary things of life." We're incompetent

01:33:46.780 | in the ordinary things of life. And he starts to list a number of examples. And later in

01:33:54.180 | the paragraph he says, "We're in debt over the eyeballs. We cannot make ends meet, even

01:33:59.460 | on two incomes. And yet we hug ourselves for being liberated, looking with pity on a grandmother

01:34:06.220 | who in a single day did 50 skillful things for people she loved, rather than spending

01:34:11.820 | eight hours fielding phone calls in an office or scraping plaque off the teeth of strangers

01:34:17.740 | while wearing goggles and a face mask to guard against dreadful infections from their blood

01:34:22.420 | and spittle." And he says, "Every single pagan philosopher of the ancient world said

01:34:29.100 | that if you wanted to be free, you had to learn the hard ways of virtue, and that the

01:34:33.820 | worst form of slavery was slavery to your own appetites. That is what the founders of

01:34:38.780 | the United States also believed. That is what Christian preachers used to preach. That is

01:34:43.140 | what we have repudiated or forgotten, so that now we look to a massive central government

01:34:48.260 | for everything." Goes on and gives examples of that. And then he closes with this paragraph,

01:34:53.580 | "So we need to clear out the garbage, admit our errors, and rebuild. That requires humility,

01:35:00.940 | patience, and determination. But nothing else will do. When your only choices are repentance

01:35:07.500 | or oblivion, you repent." It is time to get to work, and that is what this book is about.

01:35:12.380 | Now, it's a great book, and he talks through some ways to do that. What I'm saying is,

01:35:19.100 | if you desire more freedom in your life, there are things that you can do short of being

01:35:23.300 | financially independent. I began this show with talking about spiritual liberty. If you

01:35:30.300 | are spiritually free and in a place of spiritual liberty, you have more freedom than you need.

01:35:40.500 | But now the next thing is some lifestyle decisions that you can make. What I have found, which

01:35:45.420 | was surprising to me because I didn't set out with this idea, but what I have found

01:35:49.380 | is that having my wife be home without the concern to try to figure out how to create

01:35:55.900 | an income has been one of the best lifestyle decisions that I could possibly make. I'm

01:36:04.420 | happier for it, she's happier for it, our children are happier for it. Consider if you,

01:36:14.620 | your spouse, and your family might be happier for it. I consider it an absolute benchmark

01:36:21.660 | of freedom and something that we don't want to give up. I hope you'll consider it. Now,

01:36:29.220 | stay with me in this series. I've got a number of other things. Some of them you'll expect,

01:36:32.660 | some of them you won't expect. We're going to talk more about financial freedom. We're

01:36:35.780 | going to talk about freedom from the state. I'm going to give you some really practical

01:36:39.180 | stuff. But these are, I think, things that anybody can do. Anybody can become spiritually

01:36:45.220 | free. Anybody who wants to can have a stay-at-home wife. All of these are achievable and all

01:36:52.380 | of them will help you in your freedom. Thank you so much for listening. I appreciate your

01:36:55.820 | help. If you need any personal help, feel free to reach out to me in a couple of ways.

01:36:59.460 | First of all, I sell a number of courses, including some courses on, I guess the most

01:37:04.460 | impactful one today would be the one that I have called "How to Borrow Money Safely

01:37:07.620 | and Never Pay Interest Using Credit Cards." We'll talk more about that in a show that

01:37:11.060 | I'll do on financial liberty. We'll talk about being debt free and having money, etc.

01:37:16.500 | But for now, feel free to check out my courses. You can go and find those at radicalpersonalfinance.com/store.

01:37:20.500 | I guess, let me plug the other more relevant one. I wasn't prepared with my ad copy. Big

01:37:27.660 | relevant one is career, my career and income planning course. One of the major reasons

01:37:34.000 | why many men can't support a stay-at-home wife is simply because they've never bothered

01:37:39.280 | to figure out how to try. They've never sat down and said, "This is expected of me, so

01:37:44.060 | I've got to build a career that actually makes money." Rather, they've just kind of randomly

01:37:47.460 | bounced into whatever random job that they're in. If that's you, stop. Figure out how to

01:37:53.860 | build a high-income career. Because although you can support a wife and family on $50,000

01:37:59.620 | a year, you can do it. And if I had to, I would do it. I'll tell you, it's a whole lot

01:38:04.580 | nicer to do it on $150,000 a year. It's just a lot better. It's better for you, better

01:38:11.840 | for your wife, etc. So sit down, be an adult, grow up and make a career plan. Go to radicalpersonalfinance.com/store

01:38:18.060 | and see if my course can help you with that. Thank you for listening. Be back with you

01:38:20.780 | soon.

RPF0690-Seven_Rings_of_Freedom-Spousal_Liberty