RPF0691-Seven_Rings_of_Freedom-Family

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00:00:30.620 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance,

00:00:31.860 | a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,

00:00:33.820 | skills, insight, and encouragement you need

00:00:36.200 | to live a rich and meaningful life now,

00:00:38.500 | while building a plan for financial freedom

00:00:40.260 | in 10 years or less.

00:00:42.040 | My name is Joshua, I am your host,

00:00:44.140 | and today we continue our Seven Rings of Freedom series,

00:00:46.780 | Seven Rings of Liberty,

00:00:48.140 | wherein I discuss with you some ideas

00:00:50.200 | that I believe that if you implement them,

00:00:52.440 | will dramatically enhance your personal freedom.

00:00:55.480 | I have implemented all of these,

00:00:57.420 | and I have experienced the benefits

00:01:01.620 | in terms of living a very free lifestyle.

00:01:04.700 | And I don't know of anybody who lives

00:01:07.960 | a more free lifestyle than I do,

00:01:09.260 | and that's something I'm very grateful for.

00:01:10.900 | And I'm gonna share with you those ideas.

00:01:12.600 | Now, thus far, even though this is a financial show,

00:01:15.840 | a lot of what I've talked about has been somewhat financial.

00:01:19.740 | We've talked about spiritual liberty,

00:01:21.300 | I made the arguments that if you're addicted to something,

00:01:25.080 | or you're in bondage, if you're just enslaved

00:01:29.840 | in a sinful lifestyle, something that's got you,

00:01:32.580 | you can't be free, no matter how rich you are,

00:01:34.900 | you just can't be free, and so that was step one.

00:01:36.540 | Then I talked about spousal liberty,

00:01:38.720 | the value of having a stay-at-home wife,

00:01:40.580 | and how, although you can analyze the finances of it,

00:01:44.540 | it comes with major freedom benefits.

00:01:46.760 | And I've ordered this series,

00:01:48.780 | not in order of necessarily your order,

00:01:51.280 | but in the order that I think I would do these things.

00:01:53.860 | Now, I have to admit that a lot of this

00:01:56.080 | is ideologically driven, but these are the things

00:01:59.160 | that I would do.

00:01:59.980 | If I could only do one of these seven things,

00:02:01.360 | I would do the first one.

00:02:02.360 | If I could only do two of these seven things,

00:02:03.960 | I would do the first two.

00:02:05.000 | If I could only do three, I would do these first three,

00:02:06.760 | which is where today we're gonna talk about family liberty.

00:02:10.480 | Then, as we pivot, this is the last

00:02:12.720 | that's kinda highly ideologically,

00:02:15.800 | then we're gonna talk about financial spending liberty,

00:02:18.720 | we're gonna talk about business liberty,

00:02:20.320 | we're gonna talk about freedom from state control,

00:02:22.600 | freedom from government,

00:02:23.700 | and then we're gonna talk about financial liberty.

00:02:26.300 | That's where we're going in this series.

00:02:27.860 | But what I have experienced,

00:02:29.860 | and the reason I'm discussing this,

00:02:31.460 | 'cause I want you to understand

00:02:32.620 | that there are benefits of these things

00:02:34.500 | that are under-discussed.

00:02:36.500 | One of the reasons many people want financial independence,

00:02:38.940 | and they're striving for that,

00:02:40.540 | is to have more freedom in their lives.

00:02:42.420 | And freedom often comes down to the ability to choose

00:02:46.100 | whatever you want to choose

00:02:47.380 | with a minimum of external constraints.

00:02:50.020 | And what I've found is that these decisions

00:02:52.260 | have helped me to have that freedom,

00:02:54.840 | even though I'm not yet financially independent.

00:02:57.080 | So I wanna talk to you about family liberty,

00:02:59.640 | and the specific application of that,

00:03:02.460 | which is home education, homeschooling.

00:03:05.800 | I've spoken extensively about home education, homeschooling,

00:03:08.780 | and I'm not going to reprise

00:03:10.560 | all of those previous shows in this show.

00:03:13.660 | Rather, I'm gonna focus on the freedom,

00:03:16.580 | and the freedoms that you have

00:03:18.680 | that come from homeschooling.

00:03:20.380 | I think that's under-discussed.

00:03:21.920 | But I've come to really appreciate those freedoms

00:03:24.940 | as we have engaged in the home education process

00:03:28.820 | with our children.

00:03:30.060 | I do need to begin with a disclaimer

00:03:32.580 | that should be obvious, but I have found is not.

00:03:35.660 | You should do what's right for you and your family.

00:03:39.820 | I don't know you.

00:03:41.260 | I don't know any of your situation.

00:03:43.540 | And you have to do what's right for you and your family,

00:03:45.820 | regardless of what someone else says.

00:03:47.820 | My only goal is to share things that I have learned,

00:03:50.060 | share ideas that I believe are valid,

00:03:52.040 | but all ideas have to be filtered

00:03:54.080 | through your own personal situation.

00:03:57.820 | There are situations in which,

00:03:59.400 | as much of a proponent of home education as I am,

00:04:03.020 | there are situations that I could go through

00:04:05.760 | that if I looked at my family

00:04:07.080 | and I saw certain things happening,

00:04:09.120 | I would enroll my children in a school,

00:04:11.480 | whether it's a private school, a government school.

00:04:14.520 | Different situations call for different measures.

00:04:17.180 | So I'm just gonna share with you

00:04:18.060 | what I think is the best,

00:04:20.360 | or perhaps the ultimate, some of the benefits of that,

00:04:22.880 | and then you'll have to figure out

00:04:24.040 | how to apply those in your situation.

00:04:26.240 | So hopefully you can stick with me

00:04:27.420 | without being offended by the strength of my own ideas.

00:04:32.420 | Let's talk about freedom.

00:04:35.480 | First, I consider the evidence, the case,

00:04:38.480 | very, very clear that home education

00:04:43.200 | is a superior educational modality.

00:04:47.320 | On almost every metric,

00:04:48.560 | homeschooled children outperform those

00:04:52.120 | who are enrolled in other institutional schools.

00:04:55.160 | On almost every academic metric,

00:04:57.040 | on just many, many metrics.

00:04:59.640 | So that to me seems objectively proven.

00:05:03.000 | And the big downside potentially of home education

00:05:09.000 | is the time that's required from a father and a mother.

00:05:13.760 | That's one of the areas

00:05:14.840 | where if you make a case for freedom,

00:05:17.720 | then you say, "Is it really free

00:05:20.600 | "if I've gotta do school for my children?"

00:05:23.160 | It does take more time to work with your children,

00:05:26.200 | to teach your children, especially in the younger years,

00:05:29.080 | than it does to take them to the bus stop

00:05:34.080 | and drop them off on the bus

00:05:35.840 | to go off to an institutional school.

00:05:37.320 | Certainly, it takes more time.

00:05:38.600 | And so for that metric,

00:05:39.760 | if we're measuring our lifestyle based on freedom,

00:05:43.040 | I think you gotta consider,

00:05:44.820 | there's a cost to that.

00:05:46.760 | There's also a cost to that,

00:05:47.800 | that you're going to need somebody

00:05:49.240 | to be involved in the homeschool.

00:05:52.720 | Usually that is usually a mother,

00:05:55.080 | but it might be a mother, might be a father.

00:05:57.080 | You might need a grandmother.

00:05:58.400 | I was homeschooled by my grandmother for several years

00:06:01.080 | during my elementary school years.

00:06:02.760 | Might be a family friend, might be a neighbor,

00:06:04.400 | might be a community member, et cetera,

00:06:05.800 | but you're gonna need somebody.

00:06:07.720 | But I've experienced that as long,

00:06:09.360 | if you care about those things ideologically,

00:06:11.780 | so for example, for us, that's a small burden

00:06:14.320 | because we really want that child involvement.

00:06:16.780 | We want to be together with our children.

00:06:18.440 | We want to build that strong family culture.

00:06:20.880 | We want the very best that we can achieve for our children,

00:06:23.240 | as do all parents.

00:06:24.840 | But I've come to realize

00:06:26.960 | that there are some freedoms that I enjoy

00:06:29.200 | because of that decision.

00:06:31.880 | And I'm gonna talk through some of these freedoms for me

00:06:34.880 | and then also freedoms for our children.

00:06:37.460 | Because as parents,

00:06:38.960 | one of the things that you often want for your children

00:06:41.120 | is you want your children to avoid some of the mistakes.

00:06:44.600 | If you as a parent got yourself deeply in debt

00:06:47.720 | and you made a bunch of dumb financial decisions,

00:06:49.920 | you want to help your children avoid that

00:06:51.300 | because you want them to do better than you did.

00:06:54.280 | So let me share with you some ways that I've learned

00:06:56.680 | that choosing to homeschool has enhanced my freedom.

00:07:00.420 | The first freedom is freedom of time.

00:07:03.040 | And that's both for me and for the children,

00:07:05.800 | but primarily for the children.

00:07:07.880 | I am so grateful that my children have a free schedule,

00:07:12.880 | that they don't have massive amounts of their time

00:07:17.520 | taken up in relatively worthless activities.

00:07:20.320 | Just something as simple as a daily commute.

00:07:22.520 | When I was growing up,

00:07:23.520 | I often rode the bus when I was in school.

00:07:26.260 | In my high school years,

00:07:27.100 | I rode the bus for 45 minutes a day.

00:07:29.760 | Add that up, 45 minutes on the way there,

00:07:31.760 | 45 minutes on the way back,

00:07:32.960 | pretty soon you're talking about real time.

00:07:34.880 | And yet that's not an abnormal commute for many people.

00:07:38.560 | Many parents get up,

00:07:39.520 | take their children 20, 30 minutes across town.

00:07:42.320 | Now you can put that time and redeem that time

00:07:44.440 | by enjoying good conversation with your children, et cetera.

00:07:48.520 | But it's really nice just to have a freedom of time.

00:07:51.720 | One of my major complaints about institutionalized schooling

00:07:55.220 | is that most of a child's time in institutional school

00:07:59.360 | is wasted because of the need to try to get

00:08:03.600 | a bunch of diverse people to move together.

00:08:06.160 | Whereas the average homeschool student

00:08:10.000 | can complete in two to three hours

00:08:12.080 | what might take an institutionalized school student

00:08:15.480 | six, eight hours to do.

00:08:18.680 | There's just no need to spend that much time on academics.

00:08:21.480 | You can get great academic results

00:08:22.840 | in two to three to four hours a day.

00:08:25.000 | And so that frees up a child's time.

00:08:28.640 | And when a child is young,

00:08:29.960 | one of the most important things that they have is time.

00:08:33.000 | And the way that they invest that time

00:08:35.040 | will make a dramatic difference in the outcome

00:08:37.240 | that they get of their education,

00:08:39.280 | of their childhood, et cetera.

00:08:40.960 | And so in an institutionalized schooling environment,

00:08:44.520 | much of the time is wasted.

00:08:46.320 | The learning time is not very efficiently used

00:08:49.580 | because the need for a child to go at the same pace

00:08:52.560 | as a bunch of other students

00:08:53.520 | instead of the ability to excel at their own pace

00:08:57.080 | or to go slowly at their own pace.

00:09:00.400 | And then much of the play is not so fun,

00:09:02.540 | where it's just stuck into arbitrary schedules

00:09:05.360 | and yeah, you got 45 minutes here to play.

00:09:07.320 | And so instead of a child being able to gain the benefit

00:09:10.080 | of hours of uninterrupted self-directed play,

00:09:13.580 | then they just have this highly structured directed play,

00:09:17.280 | which doesn't have the same benefits

00:09:18.800 | as unstructured undirected play.

00:09:22.240 | So I really treasure seeing my children have time

00:09:27.240 | to enjoy their pursuits.

00:09:28.500 | And it's only gonna get better from here.

00:09:29.760 | My children are still very young.

00:09:30.840 | My eldest is six.

00:09:32.000 | It's just gonna get better from here.

00:09:33.600 | And when you talk about freedoms,

00:09:35.480 | especially the freedoms that you and I really enjoy,

00:09:39.920 | it's really nice to have,

00:09:42.000 | what do you want when from financial independence?

00:09:45.680 | Many people want control over their day, freedom of time.

00:09:48.200 | Well, don't you want that for your children?

00:09:50.400 | I think many people really do.

00:09:51.900 | They want that for their children.

00:09:54.200 | Now, the opposite side is it's really nice

00:09:56.560 | to have freedom of time for the parents.

00:10:00.720 | One of the things that we find,

00:10:02.960 | and I try to run my day in a fairly scheduled way,

00:10:05.560 | I think that leads to a more efficient,

00:10:07.340 | smoother functioning household.

00:10:08.720 | So we have a family schedule.

00:10:10.440 | But the nice thing about a schedule is

00:10:12.440 | there's no outside dictates on that family schedule.

00:10:16.240 | So if you get up a little bit later,

00:10:18.440 | or you go to bed a little bit earlier or later,

00:10:20.940 | or something changes, you're not stuck on a rigid

00:10:24.160 | chronological hour time schedule

00:10:27.640 | imposed on you from without.

00:10:29.920 | Just yesterday, I made a big breakfast for my family,

00:10:34.480 | and we're just enjoying, I was sitting at the table,

00:10:36.320 | just kind of lingering over the table,

00:10:37.760 | and I was talking with my wife

00:10:39.240 | about how much I appreciate the ability to do that.

00:10:43.480 | Now, one of the things that gives me the ability to do that

00:10:46.360 | is, of course, entrepreneurship,

00:10:47.380 | which we'll talk about in a later show,

00:10:48.620 | leading to additional freedom.

00:10:50.480 | But I'm grateful that my wife and my children can do that,

00:10:54.680 | even if I can't.

00:10:56.600 | I had an experience when I was a financial advisor

00:10:58.680 | where I called on a prospective client,

00:11:01.600 | and it was about 9.30 in the morning.

00:11:03.720 | I was invited to their home,

00:11:05.080 | and I'm sitting there at the kitchen table,

00:11:06.400 | and this husband and wife are just simply sitting there,

00:11:08.920 | lingering over their coffee to meet with me.

00:11:11.800 | And they didn't seem to have any real pressing need

00:11:15.080 | to rush out the door and get to work.

00:11:16.880 | We were just having a leisurely conversation.

00:11:19.480 | As I recall, they didn't have much money,

00:11:21.720 | but it just was such a clear picture to me

00:11:23.880 | of what I didn't necessarily have at that time.

00:11:26.680 | Because I worked a lot,

00:11:27.520 | I'd get to the office at seven o'clock

00:11:29.160 | and start my day usually by seven o'clock.

00:11:31.880 | And I thought to myself, I want this.

00:11:36.160 | I want the ability to sit and linger over a cup of coffee

00:11:40.800 | if I choose to, to sit and enjoy a sunny morning

00:11:43.640 | without having to rush off and worry about it.

00:11:47.280 | And I appreciate the fact that my family,

00:11:50.200 | even if I didn't have that ability,

00:11:51.600 | my family has that ability,

00:11:52.920 | the ability to linger over breakfast.

00:11:54.720 | Perhaps there's an important conversation going along

00:11:57.120 | between parents and children.

00:11:58.600 | You can just linger.

00:11:59.720 | Perhaps somebody wasn't feeling well.

00:12:01.200 | My wife wasn't feeling well yesterday.

00:12:02.720 | And so we just adjusted the whole schedule

00:12:04.880 | and she was able just to comfortably stay in bed

00:12:07.560 | some of the day and recover from her sickness.

00:12:11.480 | And so the freedom over time is really, really compelling.

00:12:15.080 | And when you get away

00:12:16.260 | from all of those institutional constraints,

00:12:19.240 | it completely opens up your time schedule,

00:12:21.640 | which leads to a really high quality of life.

00:12:25.880 | Related to freedom of time,

00:12:27.000 | the next freedom that I really appreciate

00:12:28.440 | is just the freedom of family scheduling.

00:12:31.800 | If you're not enrolled in a large institution

00:12:34.700 | where you have to go along

00:12:36.680 | with everything that's institutionalized,

00:12:38.840 | you gain total freedom over your family schedule.

00:12:42.440 | Caveat, of course,

00:12:43.400 | that you have to work this into how you create an income.

00:12:46.760 | But most people who are locked into an institutional schedule

00:12:50.440 | tend to have, in my opinion, fairly inefficient lives.

00:12:53.840 | They have to do everything

00:12:55.560 | when everybody else has to do everything.

00:12:57.640 | If you go to the store on Tuesday at 10.30 in the morning,

00:13:00.320 | it's pretty quiet.

00:13:01.160 | You don't have to fight traffic on the way there.

00:13:03.080 | But if you go to the store at 5.30 in the evening,

00:13:04.920 | it's usually pretty full

00:13:05.800 | because everyone's on the same workweek schedule.

00:13:08.400 | If you're gonna go on vacation,

00:13:09.520 | well, most people have to schedule their family vacations

00:13:12.160 | around school activities,

00:13:13.480 | which means that the parks are full, the hotels are full.

00:13:16.360 | If you're in a tourist attraction place,

00:13:20.000 | you can't schedule things

00:13:21.020 | when they're financially inefficient.

00:13:22.800 | You can't go and take the cruise on the off season

00:13:24.960 | 'cause the kid's gotta be in school.

00:13:26.760 | One of the things I really treasure

00:13:28.600 | about our current family schedule

00:13:30.840 | is the fact that we don't have any day-to-day commitments.

00:13:33.920 | And so we can simply come and go

00:13:36.480 | as we believe is best for our family

00:13:38.840 | without the need to relate to other people

00:13:41.060 | who aren't in our family.

00:13:43.060 | So for us, this comes in really handy

00:13:45.420 | with just things like traveling.

00:13:47.180 | We travel quite a bit.

00:13:48.460 | And when we travel,

00:13:49.540 | I don't have to worry about consulting my wife's work schedule.

00:13:52.280 | I don't have to worry about consulting

00:13:54.720 | my children's school schedule

00:13:56.200 | and seeing when is the holiday break, et cetera.

00:13:58.960 | We just do it.

00:14:00.520 | And the way that we handle our schooling days

00:14:02.920 | is what we've chosen to do thus far

00:14:04.840 | is just to do schoolwork year-round.

00:14:07.300 | I don't know that we'll always continue that.

00:14:09.480 | There's arguments against that,

00:14:10.480 | to take a summer break, things like that.

00:14:11.960 | But at the moment, we just do school year-round

00:14:14.240 | unless we've decided to not do school.

00:14:15.980 | So if we're gonna go travel for a week,

00:14:17.800 | then we just don't do school for that week.

00:14:19.600 | And then when we get back,

00:14:20.440 | we pick up the same schedule right away.

00:14:22.680 | I think this has better educational outcomes.

00:14:25.460 | I think it's better because the students stay current

00:14:28.000 | on what they're working on

00:14:29.160 | instead of having this weird four-month, five-month break,

00:14:33.040 | four-month, whatever it is,

00:14:34.540 | where they forget some of the concepts they're doing.

00:14:36.220 | They're always relatively current.

00:14:38.100 | I think that if you increase the number of days of schooling

00:14:41.600 | from the standard 180 days up to a higher number of days,

00:14:44.920 | you get a tremendous compound effect.

00:14:46.600 | Just run the numbers on if you're learning every day

00:14:48.720 | and you go from 180 days per year to 230 days per year,

00:14:52.440 | you get a big compound effect

00:14:53.720 | over the course of an academic career.

00:14:56.720 | But beyond that, it's just really nice for a family schedule.

00:15:00.200 | There's no need to worry about other people's schedules.

00:15:02.680 | That means that you can come and go

00:15:03.880 | and you can get tremendous efficiency with your spending,

00:15:06.700 | which really helps on the budgets.

00:15:08.380 | You can say, all right, we wanna go to this place.

00:15:11.360 | Well, let's see when the tickets are cheap.

00:15:13.240 | And you can buy a weird scheduling ticket combination

00:15:16.680 | that saves you hundreds or thousands of dollars

00:15:19.440 | just simply because you have the flexibility

00:15:21.040 | to fly on those days.

00:15:22.880 | It is awesome to be in that situation.

00:15:25.880 | And yet most people don't have that freedom.

00:15:28.580 | But you can have that freedom with home education

00:15:30.640 | because you don't have to report to anybody

00:15:32.600 | about your family schedule.

00:15:34.200 | You can also then adjust your family schedule

00:15:36.140 | to what works for you and your family.

00:15:39.160 | Some people, it works for them

00:15:40.380 | to do schoolwork in the morning.

00:15:42.120 | That was what I grew up doing.

00:15:43.280 | We did school from eight o'clock to 12 o'clock,

00:15:45.360 | and that was it.

00:15:46.180 | No homework, no anything.

00:15:47.020 | We just did school, eight to 12.

00:15:48.880 | We've kind of done that with our children right now,

00:15:51.880 | is they start first thing in the morning

00:15:54.760 | and then get schoolwork usually done 11, 12 o'clock, done.

00:15:57.680 | And then the other time can be invested

00:15:59.560 | into personal hobbies, other things,

00:16:01.880 | building creative play, reading, et cetera,

00:16:04.520 | that's not just this structured time.

00:16:06.780 | But you can flip that if it works for your family.

00:16:09.760 | So if I work a strange shift,

00:16:11.160 | let's say that I had a job where I worked a night shift

00:16:13.000 | and we needed to change the school day,

00:16:14.600 | you can do school in the afternoon

00:16:16.080 | or the evening and you have the total freedom

00:16:18.360 | to work the whole family schedule

00:16:21.240 | around what's best for the family.

00:16:23.220 | That's really, really nice, really, really nice.

00:16:26.480 | And I really treasure that freedom

00:16:28.720 | that comes from home education.

00:16:31.400 | Another freedom that I really treasure

00:16:33.360 | about home education is the freedom of geographic movement.

00:16:37.200 | Now, there is potentially a downside

00:16:39.320 | to freedom of geographic movement.

00:16:41.720 | One downside, of course, can be the difficulty

00:16:43.760 | of maintaining local community.

00:16:46.320 | There are many people who move a lot

00:16:47.520 | who develop community in other ways,

00:16:49.840 | but I think that moving constantly leads

00:16:52.320 | to a much less strong local physical community of people.

00:16:57.200 | But with that caveat, if you homeschool

00:17:00.520 | and if you also have a location-independent income,

00:17:04.120 | again, not next show, but later show in the series,

00:17:07.180 | if you homeschool, then you have total freedom

00:17:11.720 | of geographic movement because you can do schooling

00:17:15.120 | anywhere in the world.

00:17:16.560 | So literally, the entire world is open to you.

00:17:20.040 | We've done a tremendous amount of traveling

00:17:23.160 | over the last couple years as a family.

00:17:25.200 | We've been in, I don't know, 25,

00:17:26.360 | probably 20.5 different US states

00:17:28.200 | and half a dozen different countries.

00:17:30.820 | And in that geographic movement,

00:17:34.000 | we've been able to maintain a consistent family schedule.

00:17:37.520 | Our children have been able to learn,

00:17:38.760 | been able to study, been able to do academic work

00:17:41.880 | without a lot of interruption.

00:17:43.800 | Travel days, there's interruption.

00:17:45.080 | If you have days, you have activities, et cetera,

00:17:47.080 | there's interruption.

00:17:48.080 | But you can do the same thing anywhere in the world.

00:17:51.520 | From a financial perspective, this is really powerful.

00:17:54.360 | One obvious kind of low-hanging fruit

00:17:57.880 | is it allows you to completely ignore

00:18:00.600 | one of the major things that parents look for

00:18:03.320 | in their housing choices, which is living

00:18:08.100 | in a so-called good school district.

00:18:10.360 | The letter rating that your school district receives,

00:18:13.360 | which nobody has any idea what a good school district

00:18:15.880 | actually means, but that letter rating

00:18:17.760 | has a big impact on housing prices.

00:18:20.980 | Or perhaps the need to live within

00:18:22.720 | a geographically close area, a doable commute

00:18:27.300 | to a certain private school that you wanna be involved in.

00:18:30.360 | Those things make a big difference

00:18:31.880 | in terms of your housing costs

00:18:33.680 | and the type of neighborhood that you live in,

00:18:35.120 | which drives all of the other expenses.

00:18:37.260 | If you can homeschool, you have the ability

00:18:40.720 | to completely ignore those things.

00:18:42.600 | You can buy a house in a bad school district

00:18:44.920 | and you don't care because you're not using

00:18:48.680 | that school district's services.

00:18:51.360 | Be careful on that.

00:18:52.200 | Sometimes that may not be so good

00:18:53.420 | in terms of the house price resale value,

00:18:55.920 | but it's worth it to consider that.

00:18:58.200 | If you wanna live out in the country

00:18:59.360 | or live in a remote place or live in some little country

00:19:01.760 | in the middle of nowhere, you can do that

00:19:03.720 | and still get a world-class education.

00:19:05.880 | You can do that without an internet connection,

00:19:07.360 | but when you can bring in an internet connection

00:19:08.960 | and you have that total geographic freedom of movement,

00:19:11.840 | it's really, really powerful.

00:19:13.800 | The freedom of geographic movement opens up

00:19:16.240 | a huge, huge potential for cost savings.

00:19:21.240 | You can live in a place with low housing prices.

00:19:24.180 | You can live in a place with inexpensive goods and services.

00:19:28.020 | You can live in a place that's very efficient

00:19:29.920 | for your personal tax planning

00:19:31.280 | and dramatically reduce your taxes.

00:19:33.240 | You can live in a place, in your choice of a place to live,

00:19:35.700 | you can live in a place that you love far more

00:19:37.720 | that has all these lifestyle benefits

00:19:40.160 | and comes as being a lot cheaper.

00:19:43.880 | And home education is one of the ways that you do that.

00:19:46.920 | One of the things that I have been grateful to see

00:19:49.840 | as a proponent and advocate for home education

00:19:52.800 | is that when I study the stories of people

00:19:55.800 | who wanna do interesting family travel,

00:19:57.960 | I always loved the podcast, Family Adventure podcast,

00:20:01.720 | Eric Hemingway, when he was doing that show,

00:20:03.360 | and they would interview all these people.

00:20:04.760 | And basically, all of them, they were traveling as families,

00:20:08.740 | all of them chose to do home education.

00:20:12.100 | And the reason is just simply because you can't travel

00:20:14.580 | and not do some form of home education.

00:20:16.740 | Perhaps you can enroll your children in online school.

00:20:19.060 | Lots of school districts are doing that,

00:20:20.860 | which by the way is low-hanging fruit.

00:20:22.380 | If you want to go through

00:20:23.820 | the standard government school curriculum,

00:20:25.420 | the standard government school grades, et cetera,

00:20:27.440 | you want a fairly standardized process, you want teachers,

00:20:29.840 | just look to see if your local government school district

00:20:31.820 | offers an online version where they can go through

00:20:34.420 | and submit their work online.

00:20:36.180 | Many people all over the world are using that

00:20:37.900 | so they can go and travel the world with their children,

00:20:39.960 | do world schooling, go live on a sailboat, live in an RV,

00:20:42.720 | move to a foreign country.

00:20:44.280 | That freedom of geographic movement is incredible.

00:20:47.340 | And I think that when you have that,

00:20:49.040 | you can use that even as part

00:20:50.480 | of your overall educational plan.

00:20:53.120 | One of the popular terms that I really like

00:20:56.200 | is world schooling, basically using the world as a textbook.

00:20:59.720 | I think that's fantastic if you have the ability

00:21:02.040 | or the vision to create something like that.

00:21:04.040 | You can really help a child

00:21:06.120 | to have a dramatically different view of education

00:21:10.060 | based upon using the world as an educational opportunity.

00:21:15.060 | And you can do that in your local town,

00:21:17.640 | just simply going and enjoying the history

00:21:19.900 | of your local town.

00:21:21.380 | You can do that in your state, in your country,

00:21:23.640 | all across the world, tremendous.

00:21:26.560 | That freedom of geographic movement is amazing.

00:21:29.840 | I love it, I love it so much.

00:21:31.740 | And it leads to so much fun that you can have,

00:21:35.320 | especially if you're a travel hacker

00:21:36.700 | or you're good at finding travel deals,

00:21:38.700 | the ability to not have to try to fit into

00:21:40.760 | someone else's school schedule,

00:21:42.620 | which in many ways is built on an antiquated agrarian model,

00:21:45.720 | is really, really nice.

00:21:50.140 | And it allows you to expose your children

00:21:52.860 | to much richer experiences,

00:21:54.660 | to much more meaningful points of their education.

00:22:00.060 | The next freedom that I really appreciate

00:22:01.860 | that comes with home education

00:22:03.260 | is the freedom of association for you

00:22:06.260 | and for your children.

00:22:07.800 | I consider freedom of association

00:22:09.260 | to be one of the most fundamental freedoms.

00:22:11.720 | The ability to associate with people

00:22:13.380 | that you want to associate with on a voluntary basis,

00:22:15.700 | not to be forced into association with people

00:22:19.260 | who you don't like, or people who are rude to you,

00:22:21.760 | people who are unkind to you,

00:22:22.780 | people who just treat you poorly.

00:22:27.780 | That's a basic human right,

00:22:29.740 | the freedom of association for you and for your children,

00:22:33.380 | especially important for your children.

00:22:35.140 | One of the biggest costs of institutionalized schooling

00:22:38.860 | is that your children lose their freedom of association.

00:22:42.160 | They are stuck into an institution

00:22:44.580 | with students that you didn't choose,

00:22:46.980 | that they didn't choose,

00:22:48.180 | and they're forced to associate with that.

00:22:50.380 | And that leads to tremendous negative consequences.

00:22:54.500 | It leads to being forced to be in a situation

00:22:56.580 | of a very strange, non-normal environment,

00:23:01.580 | which leads to these weird behavioral things,

00:23:05.940 | weird cliques, weird groupings,

00:23:08.340 | the popular cool kids, the not cool kids.

00:23:10.540 | These things just inflict this tremendous trauma

00:23:13.300 | onto children.

00:23:14.300 | It leads to a child being bullied constantly,

00:23:17.440 | whether that's in a hard form with physical violence,

00:23:20.100 | whether it's in a soft form.

00:23:21.500 | That bullying inflicts incredible trauma on a child,

00:23:24.500 | and the child can't disassociate.

00:23:25.640 | What do they do?

00:23:26.480 | If they fight back, they get in trouble for that.

00:23:28.460 | They try, but they can't leave.

00:23:29.580 | You can't let 'em leave.

00:23:30.660 | What are you gonna do?

00:23:31.480 | You can't un-enroll your child and enroll 'em somewhere else.

00:23:34.180 | It's a big move.

00:23:35.500 | Freedom of association is tremendous.

00:23:37.700 | The ability for your children to get away from bullies,

00:23:40.560 | to get away from nasty people,

00:23:42.180 | to get away from people who are a bad influence on them,

00:23:45.020 | to get away from losers,

00:23:46.580 | all of those things will bring down your children

00:23:49.220 | and also you.

00:23:50.700 | As an adult, one of the most powerful freedoms

00:23:52.980 | that you have to exercise for success

00:23:55.140 | is to not associate with people of low moral standing,

00:23:59.120 | not associate with people that have low goals,

00:24:03.280 | that are not achievers,

00:24:04.480 | to not associate with people

00:24:05.760 | who are basically going to bring you down,

00:24:07.720 | but to associate with high performers,

00:24:09.640 | to associate with people who treat you well.

00:24:11.480 | And that makes a tremendous impact

00:24:13.380 | on your personal psychology,

00:24:14.680 | a tremendous impact on the quality of life that you live,

00:24:17.800 | and you want the same thing for your children.

00:24:20.040 | And so when you have total freedom of association,

00:24:22.780 | then you can pick and choose the people

00:24:25.160 | that your children are associated with.

00:24:27.360 | You can make sure that their friends

00:24:29.200 | are from the highest caliber of local people.

00:24:32.420 | You can make sure that their teachers

00:24:34.400 | are of the highest caliber.

00:24:36.680 | Not some random person that you didn't choose,

00:24:39.040 | but you can choose the best teacher in the world

00:24:41.320 | for this particular thing that my child is interested in

00:24:43.800 | is this person here.

00:24:45.200 | So I'm gonna set up a relationship

00:24:47.360 | for this person to teach my child.

00:24:49.280 | It's tremendously powerful.

00:24:51.280 | And I think that when a child is surrounded

00:24:54.580 | by positive environments and by positive peer pressure

00:24:59.460 | and a very high-performing group of acquaintances and peers,

00:25:03.360 | they're gonna gain from that.

00:25:06.900 | Now, you can do that, obviously,

00:25:08.400 | with choosing one school versus another.

00:25:11.020 | There are some schools that are known for that.

00:25:13.020 | There are some schools that are not known for that.

00:25:14.800 | But perhaps the ultimate freedom of association

00:25:17.140 | is when you're not part of the institutions

00:25:19.700 | and you can pick and choose based upon the best of the best

00:25:22.820 | in every class of person that you and your children

00:25:26.080 | are going to associate with.

00:25:27.740 | Tremendous benefit of freedom.

00:25:30.120 | Next freedom that I really appreciate

00:25:31.540 | is just the freedom of academic excellence.

00:25:34.020 | It is really nice when you're learning something

00:25:36.780 | for your children, for them to be able to advance

00:25:39.320 | at their own pace, whether that's fast or slow.

00:25:42.660 | One of the problems of trying to group together

00:25:46.540 | lots of children is to figure out how do you group

00:25:50.660 | and get a lot of children to move forward

00:25:52.940 | at a consistent time, on a consistent timeline?

00:25:56.340 | Because everybody learns at a different pace.

00:25:58.820 | Some people learn very fast, some people learn very slow.

00:26:01.760 | Now, obviously, that can change with some programs

00:26:05.180 | have the gifted program or whatever they call

00:26:07.060 | the stupid program, you know, where you put the kids

00:26:09.860 | who have a high cognitive ability and excel in academics,

00:26:12.040 | they move them over to the gifted program,

00:26:13.400 | they can move a little faster.

00:26:14.780 | And the students who don't go in the other classes,

00:26:17.820 | but even some of those programs are being phased out, right?

00:26:19.840 | It's discriminatory to have those programs.

00:26:22.180 | And so some school districts are completely

00:26:24.060 | phasing those out.

00:26:25.740 | I think New York City recently made that announcement

00:26:27.580 | in the New York City School District

00:26:29.380 | a couple of months, a month or two ago.

00:26:31.060 | But regardless, for any person, what you want

00:26:36.060 | is you want the ability to proceed

00:26:37.660 | at your personal learning pace.

00:26:39.940 | And so if you're a fast learner,

00:26:41.900 | or if you have a fast learner as a student,

00:26:44.180 | what you wanna do as an excellent parent

00:26:45.980 | or as an excellent teacher is you want your learner

00:26:47.700 | to go as fast as they're capable of.

00:26:49.880 | There's no reason to stick to these arbitrary things

00:26:52.700 | about what first grade, second grade,

00:26:54.180 | third grade, fourth grade means.

00:26:55.740 | You want them to learn as fast as they're capable of.

00:26:57.840 | You wanna always challenge your student.

00:26:59.900 | And so if you have a student of high cognitive ability,

00:27:03.140 | high IQ, does well in academics,

00:27:05.340 | does well with that kind of learning style,

00:27:07.480 | then you wanna push them and keep them challenged

00:27:09.820 | and let them go at their own pace

00:27:11.420 | so they can enjoy and constantly stay challenged

00:27:13.820 | and not be bored.

00:27:15.100 | On the other hand, if you have a student

00:27:16.540 | who doesn't do well with a certain subject

00:27:18.580 | or a certain style of learning,

00:27:20.500 | they don't do well with academics,

00:27:21.960 | their skills lie in some other area,

00:27:24.500 | you still want to challenge them,

00:27:27.440 | but you don't want them to feel like they're falling behind.

00:27:30.420 | Both of these are destructive to a child's psychology.

00:27:34.180 | Boredom is not good.

00:27:36.460 | You want a child to stay engaged.

00:27:38.180 | On the other hand, a child constantly feeling overwhelmed

00:27:40.700 | can cause, really hurt their self-confidence,

00:27:43.300 | hurt their ability to press forward

00:27:46.220 | and harm their personal confidence.

00:27:50.900 | Many children that don't do well in school

00:27:53.820 | because their skills lie in some other area,

00:27:56.460 | they don't excel with their cognitive ability

00:27:58.460 | versus other skills,

00:27:59.700 | those children wind up with these lifelong

00:28:03.060 | inferiority complexes because they didn't work well

00:28:05.580 | in that system.

00:28:06.420 | And as a parent, you don't want that for your child.

00:28:08.460 | You want your child to figure out where they really thrive

00:28:11.980 | and you want to help them to thrive in that environment.

00:28:14.820 | Well, you have the freedom in home education

00:28:17.180 | to build that kind of environment,

00:28:18.940 | freedom of academic excellence.

00:28:21.380 | Next freedom that I really appreciate

00:28:23.020 | is just gonna be the freedom to have and develop

00:28:25.200 | and maintain a non-threatening environment for children.

00:28:29.460 | I'm convinced that one of the worst things

00:28:32.160 | that happens to many children

00:28:33.880 | is they're raised in threatening environments.

00:28:35.940 | Now, obviously, that can happen outside of a school context

00:28:40.220 | and it can happen inside of a school context.

00:28:42.740 | Many children are raised in households

00:28:44.340 | where their parents don't love them,

00:28:45.860 | they don't care for them,

00:28:46.780 | their parents allow dangerous and threatening influences

00:28:49.820 | in them, the parents themselves threaten their children

00:28:52.700 | and abuse their children.

00:28:54.100 | And that creates a lifelong trauma

00:28:57.820 | that follows the child for many years

00:28:59.820 | until it ultimately becomes, unless it is healed.

00:29:03.340 | And so obviously, that's kind of a standard thing

00:29:06.300 | that we wanna get rid of.

00:29:07.660 | But beyond that, I'm convinced

00:29:09.100 | one of the most traumatic environments

00:29:10.460 | that we put children into is school environments.

00:29:13.620 | I can remember distinctly when I first entered

00:29:15.900 | into an institutionalized school environment,

00:29:18.540 | how I, for the first time in my life,

00:29:22.060 | learned that there were people who didn't like me.

00:29:24.780 | I had never understood what it was like

00:29:26.820 | when I was homeschooled.

00:29:27.660 | I had never understood what it was like

00:29:29.020 | for someone to not like you

00:29:30.620 | because I thought everybody liked me.

00:29:32.060 | And if anybody didn't like me,

00:29:33.660 | then of course, they didn't show that to me.

00:29:35.860 | Then all of a sudden, I started to find out

00:29:37.500 | that there were social hierarchies,

00:29:39.060 | that there's a pecking order,

00:29:40.380 | there's popularity contests.

00:29:42.420 | And then I found out that there's these cues

00:29:44.660 | that are part of society,

00:29:46.660 | that you have to express these certain cues, et cetera,

00:29:49.460 | to be part of the cool kid.

00:29:50.380 | And they're so stupid, right?

00:29:51.620 | The middle school cues and the high school cues.

00:29:53.860 | It's so stupid.

00:29:55.100 | I frequently felt like you go through

00:29:57.180 | this weird transition as a child

00:29:59.740 | where in the early years, most of the time,

00:30:01.940 | even elementary school was relatively safe,

00:30:03.900 | relatively peaceful, to a certain degree.

00:30:06.940 | And then towards the latter end of elementary school,

00:30:09.180 | it becomes strangely different.

00:30:11.340 | And then it becomes really threatening

00:30:12.940 | and middle school is a really terrible environment.

00:30:15.060 | High school might be a little bit better for some people.

00:30:17.140 | And then college, you start to recognize,

00:30:18.700 | oh, I have freedom of association.

00:30:20.140 | I can find my crowd.

00:30:21.460 | I can find the people that I click with

00:30:22.940 | and I don't have to do what everybody else does to fit in.

00:30:25.740 | Then you get out in the real world

00:30:26.740 | and you discover that that was all school,

00:30:28.820 | that in the real world, you can come and go as you like.

00:30:30.860 | In the real world, you can associate

00:30:32.140 | with people as you like.

00:30:32.980 | In the real world, if you don't like somebody,

00:30:34.260 | you don't like their ideas,

00:30:35.340 | you can just walk away

00:30:36.460 | and you don't have to worry about it.

00:30:37.740 | In the real world, you can find your group,

00:30:39.900 | your group of people that you really enjoy being with,

00:30:42.580 | that make you feel good, that are true friends,

00:30:45.140 | and you can bond to those people.

00:30:47.460 | And yet, the time that you're least equipped

00:30:50.220 | to manage that trauma is when you're young,

00:30:53.460 | when you don't know that's how the world works.

00:30:55.100 | If any of you or I ever went back to middle school,

00:30:57.740 | we would laugh and we would just put our heads down

00:30:59.580 | and do our own thing and finish our classes

00:31:01.300 | and move on with our life.

00:31:02.140 | We wouldn't bother with all of the nonsense

00:31:04.260 | of all of the drama.

00:31:06.020 | But it's a big deal to children.

00:31:08.140 | We have an epidemic of teen suicide in the United States,

00:31:11.860 | teen depression.

00:31:13.660 | The levels of happiness among young people

00:31:16.820 | and the psychological surveys are desperately low right now.

00:31:20.460 | And the levels of self-confidence, desperately low.

00:31:24.500 | I don't understand why more parents don't wake up and say,

00:31:26.980 | "I'm not doing this anymore.

00:31:28.700 | "You're telling me that you've created a system

00:31:31.260 | "that seems highly likely to turn my child

00:31:34.960 | "into an unhappy, depressed, medicated person

00:31:39.960 | "who's considering suicide?"

00:31:42.460 | No.

00:31:43.820 | So the ability to create a non-threatening environment

00:31:47.560 | for your children as a parent

00:31:49.080 | is just a profoundly empowering freedom

00:31:51.520 | where you can create a home environment that is peaceful,

00:31:54.480 | that's pleasant, that's safe,

00:31:58.340 | that's filled with love,

00:32:01.820 | where there's no physical threats.

00:32:04.660 | Parents buying bulletproof backpacks for their kids

00:32:07.100 | and it's nonsense, no physical threats,

00:32:09.740 | no emotional threats.

00:32:11.660 | You can weed out all of the jerks

00:32:14.020 | who wanna make themselves feel better

00:32:17.160 | by making other people feel worse.

00:32:19.420 | You can weed out a lot of the,

00:32:22.980 | you can protect your children.

00:32:25.220 | And that's so important for a child to be protected.

00:32:28.340 | Tremendous benefit and a tremendous freedom

00:32:31.660 | of home education.

00:32:33.780 | Next freedoms that I really appreciate

00:32:35.860 | is the freedom to learn what matters.

00:32:37.900 | One of the major complaints I have

00:32:43.060 | against institutionalized schooling

00:32:44.980 | is that what they teach is irrelevant,

00:32:47.640 | largely irrelevant to real life.

00:32:51.840 | There's a meme that goes around

00:32:55.940 | and shows a picture of a parallelogram

00:32:59.460 | and then it talks about,

00:33:00.740 | "Sure glad I know what a parallelogram is

00:33:02.740 | "because during the season of parallelogram season,

00:33:06.600 | "my knowledge really becomes useful."

00:33:09.540 | The play of course is tax season.

00:33:11.180 | They didn't teach me about taxes in high school,

00:33:13.260 | but they taught me about parallelograms.

00:33:14.940 | But I don't care about parallelograms,

00:33:17.420 | it's hard to use that basic knowledge of geometry

00:33:19.980 | on a day to day basis,

00:33:21.100 | but the tax knowledge is really important.

00:33:24.660 | Well, I have a high opinion of academics,

00:33:28.000 | I really care about some of that academic knowledge,

00:33:30.140 | even if it's not directly applicable.

00:33:31.980 | So I want my children to learn that,

00:33:33.740 | but I don't want them to learn that exclusively.

00:33:36.420 | The way that institutionalized schooling is done

00:33:39.580 | fails most students.

00:33:42.100 | If we use as a definition of success,

00:33:45.500 | that they're prepared to live

00:33:46.700 | as productive, knowledgeable adults.

00:33:50.340 | There was a time when people said,

00:33:51.900 | "Well, the success formula is finish high school

00:33:53.940 | "and then you can get a good job."

00:33:55.700 | And then that success formula came to be,

00:33:57.620 | "Finish college and then you can get a good job."

00:33:59.940 | Well, now there's a whole lot of people

00:34:01.300 | from my generation that are not happy

00:34:02.900 | with the fact that they finished college,

00:34:05.100 | but they find themselves frustrated with their job

00:34:08.180 | or their lack of a job.

00:34:10.060 | One of the most popular and fastest growing classes

00:34:14.340 | on college campuses are classes on adulting,

00:34:18.740 | where people come in and teach basic practical knowledge.

00:34:23.180 | It's become practically a joke,

00:34:24.940 | which I don't like when people are mean

00:34:27.020 | to entire classes of people,

00:34:28.380 | I think that's kind of ugly.

00:34:30.780 | But there's reason why millennials are stereotyped

00:34:33.740 | and whatever the, I forget the name of the generation below,

00:34:36.620 | but the generation coming out of college right now

00:34:38.300 | is stereotypically unskilled,

00:34:40.900 | unskilled to be successful in life.

00:34:43.820 | Stuffed with some disconnected academic ideas,

00:34:46.860 | but not able to put those things together

00:34:48.380 | into a coherent, cohesive model

00:34:50.580 | and not able to have practical skills.

00:34:53.140 | I don't see why that should be the case.

00:34:55.220 | I do not see why any parent should settle

00:34:57.980 | for that for their child.

00:35:00.580 | I want my child to have an immense range

00:35:02.820 | of practical skills.

00:35:04.660 | I want them to enjoy the academic pursuits

00:35:07.380 | and I have a bias towards that,

00:35:08.860 | I like academics,

00:35:10.380 | I believe that the intellectual world is really valuable

00:35:13.260 | and if my children are well suited

00:35:15.660 | to that world of intellectual pursuits,

00:35:17.660 | I want them to succeed in that.

00:35:19.780 | I want them to be really excellent in higher mathematics

00:35:23.300 | and higher sciences and in engineering

00:35:25.540 | and in high literature.

00:35:27.260 | I want them to appreciate the great ideas

00:35:30.700 | of the tremendous civilization that we're a part of.

00:35:33.140 | I want them to understand and value

00:35:36.020 | the canon of Western literature.

00:35:37.540 | I want them to understand the arguments

00:35:40.740 | of the philosophers over the centuries.

00:35:42.300 | To me, that's important.

00:35:44.060 | But I also want them to know how to build a house.

00:35:46.540 | I also want them to know how to back a trailer.

00:35:48.740 | I want them to know how to raise their own food.

00:35:50.780 | I want them to know how to build a business.

00:35:52.860 | I want them to have a wide range of skills

00:35:55.260 | that they can use to provide for themselves

00:35:56.980 | and income in the marketplace.

00:35:59.340 | One of the most difficult financial planning situations

00:36:01.900 | that I face is when I'm dealing with somebody

00:36:04.340 | who is fundamentally unskilled.

00:36:06.620 | A number of times I've worked with usually a father

00:36:10.740 | and the father is fundamentally unskilled.

00:36:12.900 | Maybe went to high school,

00:36:14.060 | did a little college here and there,

00:36:15.620 | but never developed meaningful skills.

00:36:18.300 | And it's the most horrific situation to be in

00:36:20.460 | when you're facing a 40 year old or a 45 year old father

00:36:24.580 | who's trying to support a wife and children

00:36:26.700 | and who doesn't have practical skills

00:36:28.660 | that are valued in the marketplace.

00:36:30.660 | We must help our children to develop

00:36:32.900 | sufficient practical skills

00:36:34.820 | that they can use those things to generate income

00:36:37.940 | so that they can earn at a high enough rate

00:36:40.180 | to support themselves, to support a family.

00:36:43.020 | If you want your children to be able to support a family

00:36:45.420 | so that they can build a family culture that matters

00:36:47.620 | so you can have a multi-generational impact

00:36:50.020 | through your family,

00:36:51.300 | you have to help your children

00:36:53.100 | learn how to build a high income.

00:36:55.580 | Well, there's no reason in today's world

00:36:57.180 | why that has to wait.

00:36:58.300 | It's ridiculous that an 18 year old

00:37:02.300 | could come out of an institutionalized learning environment

00:37:04.980 | and not be able to go into a specific job

00:37:07.780 | where they can say, yeah, I'm worth a lot of money.

00:37:09.940 | I'm worth $30 an hour here.

00:37:11.700 | There's no reason for it.

00:37:13.020 | No reason whatsoever.

00:37:14.780 | So obviously that's a big area of conversation

00:37:18.740 | to try to figure and working with your children

00:37:20.860 | to see where their interests lie,

00:37:22.260 | to see where their aptitudes lie,

00:37:24.020 | to try to figure out what the market is saying at the time.

00:37:26.820 | But I think that the freedom to learn what matters

00:37:29.380 | and to build those practical skills

00:37:31.420 | is really, really important.

00:37:34.540 | My best favorite model of that

00:37:36.540 | or kind of how I think it'll work out in the future,

00:37:39.540 | we'll see.

00:37:40.380 | I'll be honest with results,

00:37:42.380 | lack of results, et cetera, as I learn.

00:37:44.220 | But what I think, where I think we'll come to

00:37:46.100 | as a family in the future

00:37:47.540 | is I think we'll constrain academic pursuits

00:37:50.300 | to a few hours in the morning.

00:37:52.700 | I think three to four hours is sufficient, plenty.

00:37:55.460 | A child who's doing school every day

00:37:57.700 | without the interruption of bells and hallways

00:38:02.340 | and people stuffing them in the locker and whatnot,

00:38:06.180 | three to four hours of focused, uninterrupted work is fine.

00:38:10.060 | Which by the way, one of the basic skills that matters

00:38:14.020 | is just simply knowing how to study effectively.

00:38:16.980 | I haven't told my wife what it's called yet,

00:38:19.220 | but my wife is working with my son

00:38:21.340 | on what's practically a Pomodoro method.

00:38:23.820 | She's teaching him good skills from day one

00:38:26.900 | where at this point, now that he can read,

00:38:29.180 | most of his schooling is largely self-directed.

00:38:32.260 | She gives him a checklist,

00:38:33.460 | says here's the work that you're responsible for today.

00:38:35.780 | Goes through his books, we listen to his narration,

00:38:37.620 | we listen to his reading.

00:38:38.700 | But at this point, even that's not really necessary.

00:38:41.400 | Give him a checklist

00:38:42.240 | and then he does the Pomodoro method.

00:38:43.820 | He does 30 minutes of work and five minutes of non-work.

00:38:47.260 | 30 minutes of work, five minutes of play.

00:38:49.460 | 30 minutes of work, five minutes of play.

00:38:50.980 | And to the extent that he focuses,

00:38:54.180 | he can get his work done fast.

00:38:56.380 | To the extent that he goofs off,

00:38:57.780 | just cuts into his other free time.

00:38:59.700 | And so that's a basic skill that's taught,

00:39:01.940 | but that's not taught in an institutionalized environment.

00:39:04.180 | In an institutionalized environment,

00:39:05.440 | you have Parkinson's law in full effect.

00:39:06.900 | The work always expands to fill the time allotted.

00:39:08.980 | And so if I have finished an assignment quickly in school,

00:39:12.900 | I was never allowed to leave.

00:39:14.280 | I was never allowed to go and goof off and play.

00:39:16.660 | No, I had to sit there and wait.

00:39:18.180 | And so it's just a dumb environment.

00:39:21.300 | So practical skills though.

00:39:22.900 | What I think will happen is that,

00:39:24.020 | especially as we do more academics in the future,

00:39:26.020 | we'll do a few hours of academics in the morning.

00:39:28.740 | But in the afternoons,

00:39:29.580 | I want my children focusing on practical skills

00:39:32.100 | and developing real skills

00:39:34.500 | that can pay off in the marketplace.

00:39:36.300 | I want them earning significant amounts of money

00:39:38.100 | in the afternoon.

00:39:38.980 | So whether that's copywriting or doing tax prep

00:39:41.820 | or building wooden birdhouses

00:39:43.820 | to sell at the local green market

00:39:45.260 | or baking bread to sell to their neighbors, I don't care.

00:39:48.140 | I just care that they're building those practical skills

00:39:50.540 | and developing them.

00:39:51.460 | And I think that this is one of the areas

00:39:53.060 | where financially we have the biggest opportunity

00:39:55.060 | to set our children ahead substantially.

00:39:58.100 | The best model I've always been inspired

00:40:00.100 | by Steve and Terry Maxwell's results with their children,

00:40:03.580 | where that all of their sons were able,

00:40:06.100 | in their early to late 20s,

00:40:07.660 | all of their sons through their own employment

00:40:10.220 | were able to work and to save enough money

00:40:13.020 | to pay cash for their first house

00:40:15.180 | with a range of prices of anywhere

00:40:16.740 | from a hundred and something thousand

00:40:18.100 | to almost $200,000,

00:40:19.460 | depending on the particular situation

00:40:22.340 | of each of their boys.

00:40:23.980 | That's a tremendous legacy to leave to your children.

00:40:28.060 | The ability to earn and save money

00:40:30.100 | while they're living at home

00:40:31.500 | and to be able to start their married life

00:40:34.020 | in a paid-for house, tremendous.

00:40:37.660 | I mean, that changes dramatically

00:40:42.100 | the financial experience that the average person

00:40:44.980 | experiences in their life.

00:40:46.980 | When you start in a paid-for house,

00:40:49.060 | it dramatically changes the pressure on your marriage.

00:40:52.180 | It dramatically changes what your young family

00:40:54.620 | can look like and how well you can invest in that family.

00:40:57.340 | It changes your family tree.

00:40:59.100 | And yet it's not rocket science.

00:41:02.580 | All it is is the implementation of practical skills

00:41:06.420 | with academic instruction.

00:41:07.820 | Shrink academics down to a few hours a day

00:41:11.620 | and give an opportunity for a few hours of work

00:41:14.020 | in the afternoon.

00:41:15.020 | And their children have done it all in diverse areas.

00:41:18.780 | One of their sons is a computer engineer.

00:41:22.300 | I think another one had a building business.

00:41:24.340 | One of their daughters is an extremely accomplished author,

00:41:26.900 | has published a dozen books

00:41:28.580 | by the time she was in her early 20s

00:41:30.860 | and sold lots of them.

00:41:32.580 | Extremely accomplished, it's incredible.

00:41:34.860 | So the freedom to learn what matters

00:41:36.220 | is one of the things that I really treasure

00:41:38.420 | about using home education

00:41:41.100 | rather than going into an institutionalized environment.

00:41:44.380 | I think one of the other freedoms,

00:41:48.220 | and this is of course related,

00:41:49.460 | it's just the freedom of interest,

00:41:50.660 | the ability to study a child's interest

00:41:53.660 | and then to allow them to pursue

00:41:56.060 | and explore those areas of interest.

00:41:58.380 | If you give a child open amounts of time

00:42:01.060 | and they're not just medicated into not,

00:42:05.620 | whether it's actual physical drugs

00:42:07.620 | or whether just lulled by a system that destroys them

00:42:10.820 | and turns them into boredom,

00:42:12.100 | they're gonna find areas of interest

00:42:13.700 | and then give them time to pursue those things.

00:42:15.780 | As a parent, you don't need to be in charge

00:42:17.900 | of trying to tell your children

00:42:19.060 | everything they need to know.

00:42:20.380 | You just need to teach them how to learn

00:42:21.820 | and then set them free.

00:42:22.900 | Give them some coaching, give them some guidance,

00:42:24.900 | but let them teach themselves

00:42:26.540 | and let them develop their own interests

00:42:28.980 | in the areas that they really care about.

00:42:31.020 | I think the next thing is just freedom to learn

00:42:33.260 | in a style that's appropriate for your children.

00:42:35.900 | I've watched again and again and again

00:42:38.060 | students ruined by a system

00:42:40.380 | that doesn't fit their learning style

00:42:42.340 | and they don't see applicability

00:42:45.100 | to how what they're learning and studying

00:42:50.100 | applies to their own life.

00:42:52.380 | I'm so inspired and have been over the years,

00:42:54.460 | I need to have him back on to an update,

00:42:56.340 | which by the way, Jonathan,

00:42:57.180 | if you're listening to that, send me an email,

00:42:58.620 | I'll reach out to you,

00:42:59.620 | but I'm so inspired by Jonathan Harris,

00:43:01.660 | who I had on the show earlier in my life,

00:43:03.500 | in the very early in the show,

00:43:04.820 | who runs the website 10K to Talent with his children,

00:43:07.660 | that the way that he integrates their education

00:43:11.700 | and modern business skills is really, really impressive.

00:43:16.700 | So for example, his children, for their English assignments,

00:43:21.260 | for their writing assignments, they do writing assignments,

00:43:24.220 | but he has them do those writing assignments

00:43:26.260 | based upon a particular area of interest,

00:43:28.340 | particular area of talent,

00:43:29.980 | and with some sort of broader appeal.

00:43:33.500 | So if his, one of Caleb, who listens to the show,

00:43:36.780 | I've talked about here and there,

00:43:38.380 | Caleb is into knife making.

00:43:39.860 | So Caleb's English assignments were to write a newsletter

00:43:43.780 | to other people who were wanting to learn about knife making.

00:43:46.580 | So he would write the essays for his newsletter,

00:43:49.900 | and those were his English assignments.

00:43:52.020 | One of his daughters is into horses,

00:43:53.340 | and so she would write about horses to her newsletter,

00:43:55.980 | to her website, publishing her information

00:43:58.940 | as part of her work.

00:44:01.300 | So now you're starting to have this stacking effect,

00:44:04.380 | layering effect of skills.

00:44:05.540 | Yes, you're learning to write,

00:44:06.740 | but you're not just writing some random essay

00:44:08.340 | that your teacher's gonna read,

00:44:09.420 | put a letter grade at top, and then throw away.

00:44:11.500 | You're writing an essay that you're publishing online,

00:44:13.780 | so thus you're learning WordPress,

00:44:15.420 | or you're learning how to run an email list,

00:44:17.100 | and you're doing it over a thing that you're interested in,

00:44:19.100 | so you're learning more about that thing

00:44:20.300 | that you're interested in,

00:44:21.140 | and that can expand into another career.

00:44:22.780 | The ability to use a child's unique learning style

00:44:25.740 | is, I think, a secret weapon that will help the child

00:44:29.140 | to get way more, way more benefit,

00:44:33.260 | and to develop far more confidence

00:44:35.300 | in their ability to learn,

00:44:36.500 | and their ability to execute.

00:44:38.340 | And the next freedom that I appreciate so much

00:44:40.140 | is just the freedom to choose the moral instruction

00:44:42.740 | that your child receives.

00:44:44.340 | It is one of the most important fundamental rights

00:44:48.020 | that you have as a parent,

00:44:49.340 | is to choose the moral instruction

00:44:51.660 | that your child gets to receive.

00:44:53.420 | If you wanna see how people try

00:44:54.900 | to accomplish a moral revolution,

00:44:56.780 | almost always it starts with the children,

00:44:59.260 | and that's where, when you look at different societies

00:45:01.420 | where there have been profound moral revolutions,

00:45:03.660 | one of the biggest, hottest battlegrounds of that

00:45:06.180 | is the children, and what the children are allowed to learn,

00:45:10.180 | and how they're allowed to learn it.

00:45:12.060 | As a parent, you should never give up

00:45:15.380 | your fundamental right to choose

00:45:17.980 | what your children are taught.

00:45:20.020 | In a public school, you don't get to choose what's taught,

00:45:23.460 | and you don't get to choose who teaches it.

00:45:26.100 | Parents who send their children to government school

00:45:27.980 | will usually spend way more time

00:45:30.780 | vetting a simple babysitter

00:45:33.740 | who's gonna be with their child once every few weeks

00:45:35.840 | for an hour or a couple hours,

00:45:38.020 | than they do choosing the people

00:45:41.300 | who are gonna be with their children for an hour a day,

00:45:45.380 | to cumulatively seven hours a day,

00:45:47.740 | cumulatively 15 to 18,000 hours

00:45:50.960 | over the course of a child's life.

00:45:52.660 | To outsource that without any screening,

00:45:57.040 | without any thought,

00:45:58.420 | and to give the most valuable 18,000 hours

00:46:01.020 | of your child's life, their moral instruction,

00:46:04.740 | their character instruction,

00:46:06.620 | the way they view the world,

00:46:08.620 | to outsource that to people that are randomly selected

00:46:12.060 | by government agents that you didn't choose either,

00:46:15.020 | is insane.

00:46:16.020 | That's a public school.

00:46:18.060 | You don't get to choose what's taught,

00:46:19.100 | you don't get to choose who teaches it.

00:46:21.340 | In a private school,

00:46:22.500 | you don't get to choose who teaches it,

00:46:23.780 | but at least you can choose some of what's taught,

00:46:26.100 | but you still don't get to choose how it's taught.

00:46:28.360 | You can choose and say,

00:46:29.340 | "Okay, I'm gonna enroll my children

00:46:30.900 | "in the local Catholic school,

00:46:32.260 | "the local Jewish school,

00:46:33.580 | "or the local non-denominational Christian school,

00:46:36.500 | "or the local STEM school."

00:46:39.260 | You can choose some of what's taught

00:46:41.180 | if you're choosing a certain private education,

00:46:43.860 | but you still don't get much say over who the teachers are.

00:46:47.300 | You're kind of just given those people,

00:46:49.180 | and you still don't know anything about them.

00:46:51.900 | You have to trust the system to vet them a little bit,

00:46:54.340 | that, "Okay, I want my child to get a Catholic education,

00:46:56.620 | "so we're gonna hope that the school's gonna stand up for it,"

00:46:58.940 | but you don't know that,

00:47:00.140 | and you still don't get to choose how it's taught.

00:47:02.540 | It's not taught in a way that's unique to your child,

00:47:05.140 | but in home education, you have the freedom to choose it all.

00:47:08.140 | You get to choose what's taught,

00:47:10.220 | you get to choose who teaches it,

00:47:12.020 | and you get to choose how it's taught.

00:47:14.660 | That's powerful, and it's the most important,

00:47:18.740 | one of the most important freedoms of parents

00:47:22.180 | that they just, so many people give up unthinkingly.

00:47:25.620 | I don't get it.

00:47:27.220 | I don't get why people give up the freedoms that they have.

00:47:32.360 | So in summary, these are just some of the freedoms

00:47:34.220 | that I personally really appreciate.

00:47:36.120 | I appreciate the freedom that I have as a parent,

00:47:41.380 | and how home education has enhanced those freedoms,

00:47:44.580 | and the freedoms for my children.

00:47:47.800 | I want my children to be free of a bunch of things.

00:47:49.980 | I want my children to be free of the trauma

00:47:52.500 | that so many children come out of childhood with.

00:47:54.860 | I want my children to have the freedom

00:47:56.620 | to study the things that they're interested in.

00:47:58.780 | I want my children to have the freedom

00:48:00.060 | to develop at their own pace.

00:48:01.820 | I want my children to have the freedom

00:48:03.180 | to have self-confidence based on their successfully

00:48:06.180 | developing the skills of learning.

00:48:08.400 | I want my children to have the freedom

00:48:09.560 | to come and go throughout the world.

00:48:11.800 | I want my children to have the freedom

00:48:13.340 | to associate with people who make them feel good,

00:48:15.340 | who inspire them, instead of people who bully them,

00:48:18.000 | and tear them down, and corrupt them.

00:48:20.360 | I don't think you can make a case

00:48:23.280 | that children automatically make you freer.

00:48:26.540 | Certainly you as an individual

00:48:29.500 | can probably achieve a higher level of personal freedom

00:48:32.980 | if you don't get married, if you don't have children.

00:48:35.720 | You can come and go around the world

00:48:37.380 | like a vagabond, totally free.

00:48:39.220 | So I have to concede that,

00:48:40.620 | that I don't think that children

00:48:41.660 | make you as an individual freer.

00:48:43.740 | But I didn't have children because I wanted to be freer.

00:48:46.980 | I had children because I wanted to have a family,

00:48:49.580 | and I wanted to have a multi-generational

00:48:51.260 | impact on the world.

00:48:53.100 | And that's gonna require a lot of work.

00:48:55.420 | But what I've found is that with these choices,

00:48:58.780 | with children with home education,

00:49:00.980 | I enjoy a very high level of freedom.

00:49:04.740 | It's not as high as it would be if I was an individual,

00:49:06.660 | but that life is not fulfilling.

00:49:08.140 | It's never been attractive to me, I hated it.

00:49:10.620 | But when you have the ability to come and go as you like,

00:49:14.700 | live where you like, schedule your time as you like,

00:49:18.500 | schedule your week as you like,

00:49:20.060 | it's tremendously positive.

00:49:24.140 | So if you care about freedom, all I ask of you is this.

00:49:28.300 | Consider educating your children at home.

00:49:32.260 | That doesn't mean that you have to do all the teaching.

00:49:36.260 | There are a few basic objections

00:49:39.020 | that seem to always come up.

00:49:41.620 | And so very quickly, let me just answer just a few of these.

00:49:44.340 | There are probably more, but I just have a few.

00:49:46.660 | Number one, the basic objection that always comes up

00:49:49.220 | is what about the socialization of my children?

00:49:51.980 | When you home educate, you have the ability

00:49:54.420 | to socialize your children in the best way possible.

00:49:58.180 | Whatever you think is the best way, you can do that.

00:50:01.260 | That's the dumbest argument,

00:50:03.380 | but it's the most common argument.

00:50:05.780 | I've separately done a Facebook video on that.

00:50:07.340 | If you'd like to see that,

00:50:08.180 | go to facebook.com/joshuascheats

00:50:09.860 | where I give you five arguments

00:50:11.420 | as to why that's a dumb argument,

00:50:13.460 | the socialization of your children.

00:50:15.260 | If you choose to educate your children at home,

00:50:17.140 | you can socialize them among the very best people

00:50:20.220 | that you want to socialize with them with.

00:50:22.600 | If that means a bunch of people of their own age, great.

00:50:24.780 | If that means a bunch of people

00:50:25.700 | that are four times their age, great.

00:50:27.620 | You can choose the socialization of your child.

00:50:30.020 | You cannot choose who socializes your child

00:50:33.380 | when you put them into an institutional environment.

00:50:36.300 | The next thing is, well, how am I gonna teach

00:50:39.060 | all this stuff that I don't know?

00:50:41.100 | Ridiculous.

00:50:42.180 | First, the basic, and this especially affects moms

00:50:46.260 | where often it's like,

00:50:47.100 | I don't have the confidence to teach my child.

00:50:48.660 | I only have a master's degree,

00:50:49.900 | but I'm not sure that I'm a great teacher.

00:50:51.980 | It's insane.

00:50:53.580 | First of all, teaching children is easy,

00:50:56.020 | especially at the early years.

00:50:57.260 | A fourth grader can competently teach a third grader.

00:51:00.260 | In fact, it's one of the most powerful ways

00:51:02.020 | for that fourth grader to cement their learning

00:51:04.140 | is to teach a third grader.

00:51:06.340 | I see this happening with my children.

00:51:07.620 | They teach one another to read.

00:51:09.180 | So all you need to know is a little bit more.

00:51:12.420 | And the stuff that we're talking about

00:51:13.660 | in the early years of education is just so basic

00:51:16.580 | that literally your children can do the teaching.

00:51:19.260 | And they probably should for their own good

00:51:20.860 | and to some degree.

00:51:22.740 | Second thing is the most important skill

00:51:24.300 | to come out of schooling is the ability

00:51:26.460 | to be a self-directed learner, the ability to learn.

00:51:30.260 | Not the ability to be a student, but the ability to learn,

00:51:32.780 | which often requires you to just simply pull back

00:51:36.500 | and force the child to learn to teach themselves.

00:51:40.220 | I'm convinced that one of the most important things

00:51:42.140 | is to get the child to learn how to teach themselves.

00:51:45.580 | Because as an adult, you don't always have a teacher.

00:51:47.980 | But if you have the ability to say, I know how to learn,

00:51:50.420 | I know how to read a book,

00:51:51.700 | I know how to go and look for a book,

00:51:52.980 | I know how to go and find a teacher,

00:51:55.180 | you have the ability to learn.

00:51:56.780 | You're here listening to me right now

00:51:59.240 | because you value what I'm teaching you.

00:52:02.140 | Nobody forced you to do this.

00:52:04.340 | You went and looked for the information

00:52:06.500 | and thus you're receiving it.

00:52:09.240 | So this is part of your learning.

00:52:11.260 | And so the basic skill that children need

00:52:13.540 | is to learn how to teach themselves.

00:52:15.060 | And that should happen by middle elementary school.

00:52:17.980 | And basically from then on,

00:52:20.100 | a parent should be more of a coach,

00:52:22.300 | more of an advisor than specifically a teacher.

00:52:26.280 | And then of course the other obvious solution

00:52:31.440 | is that when a teacher is needed,

00:52:33.860 | you go out and find the best teacher for your child.

00:52:36.900 | Now that teacher might be to go and take a class

00:52:39.680 | at a local school.

00:52:41.020 | If your child is studying chemistry

00:52:43.580 | and you don't have the financial ability

00:52:45.940 | to provide a fully equipped chemistry lab

00:52:48.940 | and you believe that my child will learn chemistry

00:52:51.240 | more effectively if they can go down to the local school

00:52:53.540 | and they can enroll in the chemistry class there,

00:52:55.840 | send them down and let them take the chemistry class.

00:52:59.880 | That's entirely within your prerogative as a parent.

00:53:02.140 | And that's what you should do.

00:53:03.500 | Tons of homeschool students do that.

00:53:05.500 | Parents enroll them in a class at the local high school,

00:53:07.700 | parents enroll them in a class at the local college,

00:53:09.340 | et cetera, or you can go and find

00:53:10.940 | the world's greatest teacher online.

00:53:12.100 | You wanna teach your child Spanish,

00:53:13.180 | your child wants to learn Spanish

00:53:14.460 | and you don't know Spanish, italki.com.

00:53:17.580 | Sign your child up, have them tutored

00:53:19.320 | by a native Spanish speaker every day,

00:53:20.760 | right in the comfort of their own home.

00:53:22.740 | Your job is just simply to help them connect that.

00:53:25.340 | And you can easily put the connections there for your child.

00:53:30.340 | Tremendously valuable.

00:53:33.700 | So there are other objections,

00:53:35.180 | but you know what I forgot to talk about?

00:53:36.100 | I gotta finish the show.

00:53:37.620 | I appreciate the financial freedom

00:53:39.340 | that comes from home education.

00:53:41.620 | To get a world-class education for cheap.

00:53:45.860 | I was the other day looking at the high school

00:53:48.860 | that I graduated from and I was looking

00:53:50.260 | at their tuition rates.

00:53:51.960 | And I was considering how much they cost.

00:53:54.180 | And that high school currently has a tuition rate

00:53:56.300 | for high school of just under $20,000 per year.

00:53:59.780 | And I was imagining myself enrolling my children

00:54:02.460 | into that high school.

00:54:05.060 | And I was just thinking about that.

00:54:06.420 | I was doing the math, all right, $20,000 per year.

00:54:08.540 | Of course, I have four children.

00:54:09.980 | 20, 40, 60, $80,000 per year.

00:54:15.540 | Then I was imagining what can I do for $20,000 a year?

00:54:20.540 | What can I do for $40,000 a year?

00:54:23.860 | What can I do for $80,000 a year?

00:54:25.980 | Friend, if you can't think of how to spend $20,000 per year

00:54:31.500 | better than the local private school,

00:54:33.420 | you haven't exposed yourself to enough interesting ideas.

00:54:36.820 | For $20,000 a year, I can hire a private tutor,

00:54:39.980 | give them room and board,

00:54:41.300 | and have a private tutor in my home

00:54:44.820 | to care for my child.

00:54:46.380 | There are lots of very smart

00:54:48.100 | and lots of very learned people

00:54:50.060 | that would take room and board

00:54:51.420 | and a $20,000 per year stipend

00:54:53.820 | to live in my home or live in a little guest quarters

00:54:56.620 | out back, maybe have a maid quarters or something like that

00:54:59.540 | where they can live.

00:55:00.820 | And they have the ability,

00:55:02.180 | all they gotta do is tutor one child.

00:55:05.100 | Tutor one child and the rest of their time,

00:55:06.700 | they can work on their own things.

00:55:08.540 | I could find PhDs the world over

00:55:10.940 | who would come in and do that for $20,000 a year.

00:55:14.500 | So just that in and of itself, fairly traditional.

00:55:17.380 | Right there, I've solved my teacher problem

00:55:19.660 | for $20,000 a year.

00:55:21.940 | Now you're telling me that my child's

00:55:23.500 | gonna get better results being in a class

00:55:25.220 | of hundreds of other people

00:55:26.300 | with a student to teacher ratio of 25 to one

00:55:28.980 | versus a full-time tutor in my home.

00:55:30.540 | I can't buy it.

00:55:32.140 | I cannot buy that.

00:55:33.780 | Now, you give me the world and you say,

00:55:35.900 | "Joshua, you've gotta spend $20,000 per year

00:55:39.340 | "on each of your children."

00:55:40.940 | I can enroll them in the world's greatest classes.

00:55:44.220 | I can take them all over the world.

00:55:45.820 | I can do tremendous.

00:55:47.660 | But the point I'm making though is that

00:55:49.540 | most people don't have $80,000 a year

00:55:51.260 | to spend on their four children's education.

00:55:53.380 | But you don't need to spend that.

00:55:54.860 | A few thousand dollars a year

00:55:56.540 | provides a world-class education.

00:55:59.100 | I didn't cite this number exactly,

00:56:01.740 | so forgive me if I'm wrong,

00:56:02.740 | but from past research,

00:56:03.740 | I think the average homeschool student

00:56:05.340 | spends about $600 a year on their homeschool curriculum,

00:56:09.580 | things like that.

00:56:10.660 | Now, that doesn't count the time value,

00:56:14.380 | the time value of mom or dad

00:56:16.460 | or whoever's involved with their instruction.

00:56:18.820 | But in terms of actual money out of pocket, it's tiny.

00:56:21.880 | So I'm not gonna spend $20,000 per year per child

00:56:26.300 | to send my child to a private school.

00:56:28.020 | Not gonna put them in a government school.

00:56:30.140 | So homeschooling is by far

00:56:31.900 | one of the best financial expenses you could possibly have.

00:56:36.060 | It's incredible.

00:56:40.180 | Obviously, there are some schools

00:56:43.340 | that are not that expensive,

00:56:44.780 | just that I was doing the math myself.

00:56:47.180 | The only thing, by the way, I will point out,

00:56:48.980 | the only thing I've never been able to try to,

00:56:50.740 | never been able to replicate

00:56:53.780 | in that I don't know how to replicate

00:56:55.380 | in a homeschool environment

00:56:56.460 | are just things that require lots of other children.

00:56:59.420 | So for example, the school that I graduated from

00:57:01.220 | has a world-class theater program,

00:57:03.180 | and I always enjoyed the theater program,

00:57:04.740 | performing in musicals, et cetera.

00:57:07.540 | I don't know how you do that in homeschooling.

00:57:10.500 | I can replace socialization.

00:57:12.900 | I can do, I have lots of friends,

00:57:14.680 | lots of strong social groups for my children.

00:57:17.060 | I can't replace a theater program without that.

00:57:20.500 | Now, the nice thing is that some schools,

00:57:23.100 | especially some government schools,

00:57:24.260 | allow you to bring your children

00:57:25.340 | and just enroll them in certain classes.

00:57:27.100 | So let's say you want your children to be in band.

00:57:29.380 | Well, you can take them and enroll them in band class,

00:57:30.780 | and they go for band class, and they go for band practice,

00:57:32.740 | but they just don't go to classes the rest of the time.

00:57:35.300 | So that would be one way.

00:57:37.460 | But if I had a child that was really interested

00:57:39.260 | in something like theater, I can't replicate that

00:57:42.220 | in a homeschool, maybe the professional theater group.

00:57:46.620 | So those are the kinds of things

00:57:47.860 | that if you look at your own family,

00:57:49.420 | and you look at your children, you say,

00:57:50.980 | all right, this is a good reason for us

00:57:52.460 | to choose this particular institution.

00:57:54.420 | And you have that freedom as a parent.

00:57:56.480 | Listen, you have this freedom,

00:57:58.220 | and especially in the United States, and the world over,

00:58:00.540 | and by the way, in three shows,

00:58:02.980 | I'm gonna talk to you how to have freedom

00:58:05.260 | for things like homeschooling,

00:58:06.420 | even if you are in a country

00:58:08.380 | that makes homeschooling illegal.

00:58:09.540 | We're talking about freedom from state control.

00:58:11.580 | But if you're in the United States,

00:58:13.260 | there is a whole generation of people

00:58:15.740 | that fought in the courts for decades

00:58:19.260 | to get that freedom for you, and I beg of you, use it.

00:58:23.100 | Don't keep your children enrolled in a system

00:58:26.180 | that was designed for the 1800s,

00:58:28.580 | a factory system that's almost guaranteed

00:58:32.060 | to make them hate learning,

00:58:34.140 | to expose them to corrupting, wicked influences

00:58:36.980 | on a day-to-day basis,

00:58:38.500 | to expose them to deep trauma in their psychology,

00:58:42.780 | and they come out with a diploma

00:58:44.740 | that basically gets them nothing

00:58:48.020 | except potentially access to a college,

00:58:50.060 | which basically gets them nothing

00:58:51.940 | from a career instruction, career aspect,

00:58:55.640 | except possibly the ability to go and get a job

00:58:57.660 | that they're not gonna like,

00:58:58.500 | and then they're gonna start reading online

00:59:00.820 | and find a financial independence forum,

00:59:02.340 | and well, how, if I just work this crazy job

00:59:05.300 | for work, work, work, work for 10 years,

00:59:06.820 | then I can be financially free and do what I really want.

00:59:08.700 | Why set your children up for that system?

00:59:10.460 | It's a stupid system.

00:59:12.660 | Why not set them up for a lifestyle of freedom

00:59:14.460 | from the beginning?

00:59:15.700 | Why not give them the freedom to study

00:59:17.220 | the things that they care about?

00:59:18.720 | Why not give them the freedom to be exposed

00:59:20.820 | to lots of things so that they have

00:59:22.540 | a much more creative approach to life?

00:59:24.740 | Why not give them the financial freedom to earn money

00:59:27.420 | so that they develop useful skills

00:59:29.380 | during the years when all their peers

00:59:30.880 | are wasting their time?

00:59:32.780 | Why not give them the ability to graduate

00:59:34.420 | from high school with $100,000 in the bank,

00:59:37.060 | to start a business, or to be financially free,

00:59:39.760 | or pay cash for a house, or travel the world,

00:59:41.860 | or whatever they wanna do?

00:59:43.060 | Why not start them on a lifestyle of freedom?

00:59:45.180 | Why put them into this same broken system

00:59:48.300 | that results in broken people who hate their lives

00:59:51.380 | and are deeply unhappy?

00:59:52.740 | If you care about freedom, and if you have children,

00:59:58.440 | you're gonna want better results for your children.

01:00:01.080 | Now my ways might not be perfect, right?

01:00:04.420 | I'm sure that there are things that I don't know about

01:00:08.080 | because I don't have a 16-year-old

01:00:10.040 | that I'm working with right now.

01:00:12.060 | I'm sure of it, and I'll tell you when I'm wrong.

01:00:14.700 | I promise you that, I promised you that

01:00:16.120 | from day one of this show.

01:00:17.460 | I'll tell you when I'm wrong,

01:00:18.300 | I'll tell you when I've developed,

01:00:19.140 | and I try to do that from time to time.

01:00:20.300 | Say, here's where things I got wrong.

01:00:22.440 | But the point is that whatever it is,

01:00:23.880 | let's apply the same level of creativity

01:00:27.020 | and personalization and modern thinking

01:00:29.740 | to our children's lives and lifestyles

01:00:32.020 | with the hope of setting them a little bit ahead

01:00:35.420 | of the start that perhaps you and I had.

01:00:38.020 | It's all I hope to inspire you to do.

01:00:40.140 | If you care about freedom,

01:00:41.260 | my third ring of freedom is this, family liberty.

01:00:46.020 | The ability to educate your child

01:00:48.260 | on a path that leads to liberty.

01:00:50.240 | The ability to infuse your child

01:00:52.340 | with an ideology of liberty.

01:00:55.220 | I'm trying not to make this show too personal,

01:00:58.340 | but I don't want my children taught

01:01:00.300 | that the way they get ahead is by voting

01:01:01.880 | for somebody who's gonna give them

01:01:03.020 | more government cheese that's stolen from someone else.

01:01:05.460 | I want my children to have an ideology of work hard,

01:01:08.420 | provide for yourself, and don't steal from your neighbors.

01:01:11.440 | Can't do that in a government school.

01:01:13.180 | Can't do that in homeschool.

01:01:14.740 | Freedom of moral instruction.

01:01:16.380 | To instruct your children in a moral,

01:01:18.540 | in a sense of morality that's going to serve them

01:01:21.220 | instead of destroy them.

01:01:23.940 | Don't waste your freedoms.

01:01:25.960 | Consider what's right for you and your family,

01:01:29.060 | but I beg of you, give a serious thought

01:01:31.500 | to how your personal lifestyle as a parent

01:01:34.180 | and how the lifestyles of your children

01:01:35.620 | can become more free by home education.

01:01:38.940 | If I had to work a job, if I had to do all these things,

01:01:43.080 | but I knew I could come home every day

01:01:44.740 | and have the confidence that my children were free,

01:01:47.640 | my wife were free, I'd do it pretty happily.

01:01:51.660 | Now, tomorrow, the next episode,

01:01:54.020 | we'll talk about some ways, though,

01:01:55.340 | that your family can enjoy increasing financial liberty.

01:01:57.660 | We'll talk about financial liberty, liberty of income,

01:02:00.380 | and then we'll talk about freedom from state control

01:02:02.280 | and full and complete financial independence.

01:02:05.660 | Stay with me.

01:02:06.580 | If you're interested in my personal consulting services,

01:02:08.560 | send me an email at joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com.

01:02:10.900 | I have some openings for late January.

01:02:13.300 | If you are interested in working with me personally

01:02:15.660 | for a private consultation,

01:02:17.260 | send me an email at joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com

01:02:19.500 | and I'll share with you the information

01:02:20.660 | on how you can do that.

01:02:21.540 | Thank you for listening.

01:02:23.140 | - With Kroger Brand products from Ralph's,

01:02:25.020 | you can make all your favorite things this holiday season

01:02:28.180 | because Kroger Brand's proven quality products

01:02:30.660 | come at exceptionally low prices.

01:02:32.900 | And with a money-back quality guarantee,

01:02:35.340 | every dish is sure to be a favorite.

01:02:37.740 | ♪ These are a few of my favorite things ♪

01:02:41.220 | Whether you shop delivery, pickup, or in-store,

01:02:44.900 | Kroger Brand has all your favorite things.

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01:02:50.120 | (upbeat music)

RPF0691-Seven_Rings_of_Freedom-Family_Liberty