RPF0711-Friday_QA-COVID-19_Update_Positive_Thinking_Working_Class_Mentality_vs._Rich_Mentality_Ethical_Problems_Market_Participation

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00:00:30.460 | It's Friday and today, live Q&A.

00:00:33.220 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,

00:00:52.660 | skills, insight and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now, while

00:00:56.900 | building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.

00:00:59.700 | My name is Joshua. I am your host.

00:01:00.860 | And today it's Friday. We do live Q&A.

00:01:02.860 | Going to begin with a quick update on what I see happening with coronavirus and the economy.

00:01:08.100 | Then I've got one, two, three, four, five, six callers on the line.

00:01:11.100 | And today we're going to be moving fast.

00:01:12.580 | I got a busy day, but thank you for being here.

00:01:14.380 | If you are new here to the Radical Personal Finance podcast, every Friday when I can arrange

00:01:25.700 | the details and the logistics of being able to record a live Q&A call-in show, I do that.

00:01:30.580 | Today is Friday, March 27, 2020.

00:01:33.660 | These shows are open to patrons of the show.

00:01:35.860 | Those who sign up at Patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance.

00:01:38.860 | If you would like to gain access to these call-in shows, go to Patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance.

00:01:43.540 | It's one of the best ways to do a call-in and be able to talk about anything you want.

00:01:47.860 | Gives you a chance to ask any question you like.

00:01:49.500 | We can talk about things in general.

00:01:51.260 | We could talk about anything in your particular life.

00:01:53.100 | You can make any comment you'd like to make.

00:01:55.100 | Basically, if you want to chat with me, this is one of the best ways to do it.

00:01:58.100 | One of the cheapest ways to do it as well.

00:01:59.420 | So for all you deal hounds out there, this is one of your best ways to do it.

00:02:02.540 | I want to begin with a brief update on what I see happening with coronavirus and what I see

00:02:07.340 | happening with the economy.

00:02:08.500 | Obviously, we live in an interesting and frankly staggering time.

00:02:12.340 | The headlines over the last few days have been that a third of the world's population is

00:02:16.180 | locked down due to coronavirus.

00:02:18.620 | And that is certainly really amazing to think about the scope of this thing.

00:02:24.020 | So it's affecting all of our lives.

00:02:25.980 | You've had historic drops in the stock market, some massive increases the last few days.

00:02:31.500 | You've also had just a massive, as the economic data starts to come out, unemployment in the

00:02:36.580 | United States, huge.

00:02:37.660 | We've got stimulus packages all over the place, all over the world.

00:02:40.660 | We'll talk about that later time.

00:02:43.260 | We'll talk about in the United States.

00:02:44.700 | But check in on that.

00:02:45.820 | But here is what I see happening right now.

00:02:49.220 | So right now, as I look at the data on coronavirus, it's unclear to me what is

00:02:54.180 | happening. What I see happening is an increasing geometric curve, but it doesn't seem to be

00:03:00.700 | as severe as was previously expected.

00:03:03.100 | And so that's good news.

00:03:04.780 | I'm hopeful. I have a few points of good news.

00:03:07.260 | And so I'm more optimistic than I was recently.

00:03:10.340 | And so I think that's hopefully you are as well.

00:03:12.940 | That although you see a profusion of cases, although things are very difficult in many

00:03:17.660 | places in the world, some cities in the United States, it doesn't seem to be as severe as

00:03:22.460 | previously feared, which is great news.

00:03:25.260 | Now, what's currently unclear to me is why it doesn't seem to be as severe as

00:03:30.540 | previously feared. And I want to emphasize that it's not that things are not severe.

00:03:35.420 | There are very heart wrenching things from all over the world.

00:03:39.100 | And I expect more of those those things in the days to come.

00:03:41.500 | If you feel like we're out of the woods, I would caution you.

00:03:44.500 | I don't I don't sense that at all.

00:03:46.900 | But it's not as bad as previously thought.

00:03:49.180 | Now, again, what's unclear to me is why.

00:03:51.620 | And I don't think the data is particularly compelling at the moment as far as for sure

00:03:56.820 | why. So here's what I see on the viral front going forward.

00:04:00.580 | And then we'll talk about the economic front.

00:04:02.060 | I'm more optimistic this week based upon what I see.

00:04:05.500 | And as I see it, the worst case scenario was to have this massive global pandemic that

00:04:11.420 | was on track to kill tens of millions or hundreds of millions of people.

00:04:16.020 | Now, the only absolutely guaranteed solution to that kind of spread is to just simply

00:04:21.820 | stay home and go nowhere.

00:04:23.180 | A virus is something that you can understand how it works, even if it's the most

00:04:27.860 | severe, it's transmitted through aerosol, et cetera.

00:04:30.220 | It's very contagious.

00:04:31.220 | If you just simply stay home and if you're not infected and you don't go anywhere, then

00:04:35.300 | you don't have to be infected.

00:04:36.500 | And so that's why the ultimate the only like truly guaranteed effective public policy

00:04:42.380 | solution is to lock everything down.

00:04:44.980 | And you see that happening all throughout the world.

00:04:46.740 | Now, the lockdown, of course, has devastating economic consequences, as we are all

00:04:51.060 | experiencing today.

00:04:52.140 | But the lockdown is the only thing that's guaranteed to work.

00:04:55.900 | And that's why governments pursue it.

00:04:58.980 | But if you think about kind of what's been the bad scenario, we've assumed that the

00:05:03.460 | worst case scenario looking back has been a massive, very contagious, very deadly

00:05:10.380 | disease that spreads throughout the world.

00:05:12.340 | And the answer to that is lockdown until or unless some kind of vaccine is developed in

00:05:17.020 | the timeline for that is 12 to 18 months.

00:05:19.140 | Now, as we've talked about the jumping off points, as I see it, there are three jumping

00:05:23.580 | off points to that worst case scenario.

00:05:25.420 | And these three are all looking better.

00:05:27.100 | The first jumping off point is the development of some kind of effective therapy, some

00:05:32.140 | some magical cure, some miracle cure.

00:05:34.580 | The news over last week has especially been hot and heavy around the hydroxy chloroquine

00:05:40.060 | and Z-Pak.

00:05:42.020 | I can't tell you that I'm not a biology guy.

00:05:44.100 | I see increasing anecdotal evidence that that is possibly effective.

00:05:48.980 | And there's doctors all over the world that are trying that.

00:05:50.860 | And I haven't seen it disproven as a therapy.

00:05:53.420 | So perhaps there's a really good solution there.

00:05:56.060 | And that would be awesome because those drugs are inexpensive.

00:05:58.740 | They're widely available.

00:05:59.740 | They're kind of old.

00:06:00.940 | If they were effective against that, that would be great.

00:06:02.740 | And I'm sure there are other doctors around the world who are working on other

00:06:05.260 | therapies. That's been kind of one of the first things to improve things.

00:06:09.420 | One of the first areas that we could look at to improve things.

00:06:11.820 | The second area to look at to improve things would be the development of widespread

00:06:16.060 | testing. If a society can develop and implement widespread testing, then the society

00:06:21.380 | can just simply quarantine those who are sick.

00:06:23.660 | And that would be really great.

00:06:25.980 | Now, the United States is far behind on this with such a huge population.

00:06:30.060 | It's hard to see that happening quickly.

00:06:31.540 | But all around the world, testing is ramping up.

00:06:34.180 | They're kind of improving things, getting things faster and faster and faster.

00:06:37.380 | Used to be it was going to be days to get a result for a test.

00:06:39.780 | Now there are tests that are increasingly widely available and we're up to a day.

00:06:43.180 | So that's good. Once we can get tests down to a few hours and cheap and distributed

00:06:48.740 | all around the world, then that means that societies can do widespread testing and

00:06:52.700 | you can just quarantine the sick and those that have had contact with the sick.

00:06:56.380 | And you see that happening very effectively in some countries in Asia that it seemed

00:07:00.980 | to have managed the outbreak more effectively.

00:07:04.940 | So we're making progress on that front.

00:07:07.060 | That could be good.

00:07:07.740 | The most important progress, in my opinion, is the recent development of an antibody

00:07:13.020 | test. And if this antibody test proves to be effective and if it can be spread and

00:07:17.820 | used widely across a population, that I think has the potential of shortening this

00:07:23.300 | whole event, shortening this whole affair, which would be awesome.

00:07:26.980 | Because of the antibody, what the antibody test could prove is who has had the

00:07:31.420 | disease and who has not.

00:07:33.500 | That can be helpful for a few reasons.

00:07:35.780 | Well, one obvious reason is if those who've had the disease actually find

00:07:39.740 | themselves to be immune to the disease, they can go back to work without much fear.

00:07:43.940 | They can be useful in many situations without the worry of getting infected and

00:07:47.940 | possibly even spreading the infection.

00:07:49.700 | But more importantly, as I see it, the antibody test could tell us the actual

00:07:54.180 | prevalence of the disease in a population so that we could better understand the

00:07:58.140 | people who have severe symptoms.

00:08:00.340 | The guess and the debate about this particular strain of disease has been how

00:08:05.900 | long has it been here?

00:08:06.860 | Now, the timeline that most of us understand is that it developed in Wuhan.

00:08:11.100 | It started in China.

00:08:12.540 | It started to be spread from there.

00:08:15.700 | Wuhan got really serious in December and then it got bad in January and then it

00:08:19.340 | started to spread throughout the world.

00:08:20.580 | And then it spread throughout the world and we've got some cases.

00:08:23.660 | But along the way, there've been a lot of anecdotal reports of people saying, well,

00:08:27.700 | I had something, I thought it was just a severe flu, but I had something like that

00:08:32.020 | back in December or I had something like that back in January.

00:08:34.580 | And so one of the suspicions is that the disease is actually much more widespread

00:08:39.260 | than previously thought and that it's just simply less catastrophic with its

00:08:44.860 | medical impact than previously thought.

00:08:46.740 | But the only way to know that for certain is to develop and then implement a

00:08:50.300 | widespread antibody testing.

00:08:52.220 | And so that's the development that I'm excited about and looking to see what

00:08:55.580 | happens over the next week or two.

00:08:57.260 | Because if it did prove, if we could prove that there were actually a lot of

00:09:01.300 | people tested, then, sorry, a lot of people with the disease and just a smaller

00:09:06.460 | number than previously feared are actually sick all the time, that would be

00:09:10.300 | fantastic because then that would allow society to open up a little bit.

00:09:14.180 | So there's the optimistic case, at least that I'm hoping for.

00:09:16.740 | At the moment, it's unclear to me personally what's actually happening.

00:09:20.620 | I'm confused by the reports I read.

00:09:23.060 | I'm confused by the data that I see, and I'm just simply not competent to assess

00:09:29.140 | it, and so I'm waiting and watching and letting the epidemiologists do their thing.

00:09:33.620 | Note of important news is that some of the most dire predictions have been rolled

00:09:39.140 | back significantly in the last week, and so that's great news.

00:09:41.820 | Now let's flip this now and talk about the economic impact because here's

00:09:47.140 | what I've thought a lot about.

00:09:48.100 | Obviously, we're hurting massively.

00:09:52.460 | I've spoken to so many listeners and clients who are just going through

00:09:57.420 | catastrophic change.

00:09:59.860 | The unemployment claims huge all around the world.

00:10:03.500 | Businesses just, you know, kind of waiting to see.

00:10:05.820 | We're all waiting to see.

00:10:06.820 | So we're all desperate for a better understanding of what the actual data is

00:10:11.060 | telling us.

00:10:11.660 | On the worst case scenario, we've got catastrophe, right?

00:10:16.460 | Total catastrophe.

00:10:17.180 | We know that.

00:10:17.700 | But on the best case scenario, I've thought, well, does this all just go back

00:10:20.780 | to normal?

00:10:21.740 | Obviously, that's what we would all hope for.

00:10:23.300 | And it's interesting thing about something like a flu pandemic is that maybe

00:10:26.660 | maybe the whole thing is exposed a few weeks from now.

00:10:29.660 | It's just a total overreaction.

00:10:31.300 | It was a giant scare, but we got it wrong.

00:10:35.300 | And so can everything just go back to normal?

00:10:37.300 | That's one of the interesting things about a flu pandemic, because if you had a job

00:10:40.260 | and there was a functioning business a couple of weeks ago, let's say that a few

00:10:44.180 | weeks from now we find out that our worst fears were unfounded

00:10:50.140 | and we can all go back to work.

00:10:51.380 | Well, all the infrastructure still exists.

00:10:52.820 | Everything still exists.

00:10:53.660 | So maybe we should just go ahead and get back to work.

00:10:55.380 | I think it's possible that could happen to some degree, and that would help to

00:11:00.340 | avoid some of the worst case scenarios.

00:11:04.260 | You know, 50% unemployment kind of thing, 50% drop in GDP, which is it's hard to

00:11:09.700 | even say those numbers.

00:11:10.620 | But I still can't see an immediate return.

00:11:15.900 | And that's one of the desperately difficult things about a flu pandemic.

00:11:20.460 | My life, because of my lifestyle, doesn't look that different today than it did a

00:11:26.260 | few weeks ago and then it did a few months ago.

00:11:28.460 | And I wouldn't expect it to look that different a few months from now.

00:11:30.940 | But I am so tired of this thing.

00:11:34.780 | It feels like it just goes on and on and on.

00:11:36.900 | I've been paying attention to it since January.

00:11:38.780 | Here we are in March.

00:11:39.660 | And so a flu pandemic is awful because it's so long.

00:11:43.820 | It's probably years in terms of before everything is fully understood or fully

00:11:49.860 | handled. And so you just get so tired of it.

00:11:54.100 | And I think that that is being expressed.

00:11:56.660 | I feel that way.

00:11:57.540 | And I think I see that same thing being expressed in so many other people where

00:12:00.780 | I've been sitting at home for a week.

00:12:02.260 | I'm done. Let's get on with life here.

00:12:04.980 | And so we feel that.

00:12:08.980 | But the problem is that nothing would rapidly go back.

00:12:12.260 | And so even in a best case scenario, for example, I just was talking with my wife

00:12:18.540 | about this morning, I said, let's go through the best case scenario.

00:12:20.860 | Let's assume that we get widespread antibody testing.

00:12:24.900 | Let's assume that it proves that our worst fears were unfounded.

00:12:28.860 | It's not as deadly as previously thought.

00:12:31.180 | Would we go immediately back and just say, let's go to it?

00:12:34.180 | I wouldn't. I'm not going to.

00:12:37.380 | I would continue to stay largely isolated.

00:12:40.900 | I would add in some activities again, but I wouldn't just go right back to it.

00:12:45.300 | I wouldn't just go to public places, start going to public gatherings, start going

00:12:48.940 | to conventions and things like that, even if it were just the common flu.

00:12:53.580 | Right. The flu itself is an awful thing.

00:12:56.020 | Most people don't go out to places where they know people have the flu.

00:12:59.780 | Many people are very cautious and careful, as they should be, to protect

00:13:05.260 | themselves against that. So even if we just said, you know what, the people who

00:13:08.220 | said it's just the flu were right.

00:13:09.380 | I don't think they were right.

00:13:10.620 | But maybe they are.

00:13:12.220 | It's just the flu.

00:13:13.580 | Well, even still, I would adjust my own life and still maintain safety and be

00:13:21.100 | careful until time goes on.

00:13:23.300 | And so even if that were the case or even if some kind of vaccine were developed,

00:13:28.100 | you know, I was talking to my wife about that.

00:13:30.060 | Would we take some kind of vaccine?

00:13:31.740 | I wouldn't. Not in the short term, at least.

00:13:34.940 | Now, just because I don't trust things that are rushed to market, I don't trust

00:13:40.580 | the way that this kind of emergency footing, you get bad data, you get bad

00:13:44.140 | testing. There's such a press to like get the economy going that I would just, I

00:13:48.980 | know that I'm safe if I stay home and I minimize my contact.

00:13:52.060 | And so I would continue that for a period of time.

00:13:54.460 | Now, I don't think that most people are like me.

00:13:57.020 | I think most people would just say, let's get back to it.

00:13:58.780 | But I think there's enough people like me that would keep things constrained that

00:14:03.060 | I still expect, even in the best flu case now, I still expect significant economic

00:14:08.580 | recession, possibly depression just simply due to the change in behavior.

00:14:14.140 | So I say that to say I'm cautiously optimistic today about the virus.

00:14:20.860 | I still don't think that there's a reason to think that we're all just going to

00:14:24.620 | get back to normal in a few weeks, even in the best case scenarios.

00:14:26.980 | And I still think that some of the really difficult scenarios are possible.

00:14:31.140 | And so I'm just waiting and seeing.

00:14:32.940 | I don't know what any of us can do except wait and see, do the best we can in our

00:14:36.460 | personal finances, do the best we can to care for our families and kind of watch

00:14:40.620 | for more evidence to develop.

00:14:42.380 | I think the last week was really important and the next couple of weeks will be

00:14:45.940 | really important because if the worst case scenarios don't very quickly start to

00:14:51.380 | be seen, then I think we can look and say that, you know what, it wasn't as bad as

00:14:56.820 | we feared.

00:14:57.340 | Now, that doesn't bode well for the future.

00:15:00.660 | Anytime you make big warnings about people, people generally don't want to

00:15:04.900 | overreact.

00:15:05.540 | There's a big political argument about we're overreacting and this was crazy,

00:15:08.940 | et cetera.

00:15:09.460 | I see it as I see overreaction in the early stage of a flu outbreak is the only

00:15:14.580 | rational response.

00:15:15.580 | It's the only rational response until you get more data.

00:15:18.500 | And unfortunately, though, that doesn't work well in today's soundbite world.

00:15:21.740 | And so I'm hoping for the best, but still kind of watching day by day and see what

00:15:27.940 | happens.

00:15:28.380 | So that's my update for you.

00:15:29.580 | Last week on the Q&A show, I talked significantly about the need for, or I

00:15:34.860 | talked about the value of being concerned about financial stability in the banks,

00:15:38.700 | et cetera.

00:15:39.500 | I encouraged you to withdraw an appropriate amount of physical currency from the

00:15:44.940 | bank.

00:15:45.260 | I still stand by that recommendation.

00:15:47.460 | I have not seen any evidence this last week of any widespread panic, which I'm

00:15:51.900 | thrilled about.

00:15:52.820 | I have continued to get reports from listeners that they have a hard time

00:15:57.100 | getting much money out of the bank.

00:15:58.260 | I think if you've never tried to do business in cash, you have no concept of

00:16:01.580 | how hard it is.

00:16:02.140 | If you've never tried to do a wire transfer, you have no concept of how the

00:16:04.980 | bank treats you like a crook until you have to prove to them 10 ways otherwise.

00:16:08.540 | It's not your money in that situation.

00:16:10.020 | It's insane.

00:16:10.900 | And so I'm still concerned about that, but thankfully I've seen no major risk

00:16:18.420 | factors emerge over the next week, and I'm hoping that we don't get any more risk

00:16:22.060 | factors over the coming weeks.

00:16:24.980 | But I still am concerned about the potential of those risk factors.

00:16:29.460 | On Monday morning, the FDIC released a video saying you don't need to get money

00:16:34.020 | out of the bank.

00:16:34.500 | You can trust an FDIC insured account.

00:16:36.300 | That tells me that a lot of people are concerned and taking money out of the

00:16:39.820 | bank.

00:16:40.100 | And so the key thing I would just encourage you to remember is that the

00:16:44.900 | hardest thing about a flu pandemic is you're going to get tired of it.

00:16:47.460 | I'm tired of it.

00:16:48.860 | I'm tired of talking about it on the show.

00:16:50.340 | I'm tired of it.

00:16:51.180 | We're all tired of it.

00:16:52.260 | But this kind of disaster is very slow moving.

00:16:55.460 | There's not a quick answer to it.

00:16:57.420 | It's very slow moving.

00:16:58.500 | And these risks continue.

00:17:00.740 | So I would not rush down to the bank and deposit all my money and say, "Hey,

00:17:04.220 | look, we're getting into it."

00:17:05.500 | That's woefully premature.

00:17:07.060 | I'm still concerned about longer term events.

00:17:10.380 | On Monday night, I did a special presentation with students of my How to

00:17:13.980 | Survive and Thrive During the Coming Economic Crisis course, and we talked

00:17:17.020 | about protecting your money from worst case scenarios like hyperinflation.

00:17:20.940 | I don't predict hyperinflation in the United States.

00:17:23.140 | I still think the U.S.

00:17:24.620 | dollar, as evidenced by the data, is the strongest currency in the world.

00:17:28.620 | But I'm watching the numbers every single day, watching very carefully.

00:17:33.660 | We are in historic times, and the actual impact of those events is not apparent.

00:17:41.260 | But I've taken steps to protect my savings from those events.

00:17:44.820 | So that's my summary statement of where we stand as of Friday, March 27, 2020.

00:17:49.460 | I hope that's helpful to you.

00:17:50.700 | And now let's go to the phones and answer some questions.

00:17:55.140 | We begin with Anne in Maryland.

00:17:56.260 | Anne, welcome to the show.

00:17:56.980 | How can I serve you today?

00:17:57.820 | Hello, Joshua.

00:18:01.300 | Thank you very much for taking my call.

00:18:04.100 | I have a reflection that I would like to share, not necessarily a question, and I

00:18:10.660 | obviously would be very interested in your response.

00:18:13.660 | But before I tell you about the reflection and my observations, I just want to caveat

00:18:21.140 | it by saying that I work in drug development business, and I do understand where to read

00:18:28.340 | the right information and what's bullshit and what's not.

00:18:31.420 | I'm sorry.

00:18:31.820 | You probably have forgot this.

00:18:33.100 | So, first of all, I have to apologize.

00:18:39.260 | I haven't listened to all of your releases recently.

00:18:42.740 | And this has to do with my first observation of information fatigue.

00:18:47.420 | I realized that at some point there's so much information coming in, even for a person

00:18:52.780 | like me who can sort through the information, get the right one.

00:18:58.460 | And I observed that when I stopped, really, I just took basic care of my family, of

00:19:06.620 | myself. I decided what I need to do every day and how I need to live every day.

00:19:12.300 | And I stopped consuming the information.

00:19:14.540 | The days are wonderful.

00:19:16.820 | The weather is wonderful.

00:19:18.380 | And it's just the life is wonderful.

00:19:20.380 | So the second thing that I noticed is that I noticed that there is a huge, there is

00:19:28.820 | value in morale.

00:19:30.100 | So there is so much fear about what the virus would do to us and the economics and

00:19:35.260 | everything. And I think that there is a huge value in morale.

00:19:40.380 | And that is like we are trying to pay enormous price for something we don't know the

00:19:48.020 | price of, which is the virus and pandemic, by sacrificing something that also has huge

00:19:55.540 | value. And so I decided that morale of myself and my family is very important.

00:20:00.980 | And I took steps to boost that.

00:20:04.700 | And then by also helping people around, offering them to bring them groceries to their

00:20:10.580 | porches and all other things, sharing what I have.

00:20:13.660 | The other day I was in the store and I was getting some of the food and the cashier asked

00:20:20.820 | me if I could, if it's OK, if instead of six cans, I only take three cans of something.

00:20:27.500 | And I said, oh, of course, do you want all of them?

00:20:30.780 | And she was so surprised because everyone else was fighting for their cans.

00:20:35.620 | And I said, no, no, no. If you really need those cans, you can keep them.

00:20:38.460 | And she just, she almost cried and said, thank you very much.

00:20:42.340 | People usually don't give back those cans.

00:20:44.420 | I said, are you kidding me?

00:20:46.020 | This is. And so it takes me to the next point is that this is probably the biggest event

00:20:54.140 | that I experienced since the collapse of Soviet Union, which I personally experienced

00:20:58.380 | for myself. And I know and when I was a child during the collapse of Soviet Union, so I

00:21:05.580 | had a little bit different impression of that.

00:21:07.500 | But I remember very well my grandparents and my parents, what it did to them.

00:21:12.580 | And right now, as an adult, I was surprised that I have no fear that, you know, that the

00:21:21.740 | market is falling or anything.

00:21:23.540 | I have a feeling of wanting to help.

00:21:26.620 | So the only way I can keep my kind of my sanity, my dignity, my morale, my sorry, my

00:21:36.620 | voice breaks up, but is by is by giving back.

00:21:42.220 | So if I'm hearing the tests are missing, right, I try to contact all my friends, doctors

00:21:48.340 | and ask what's missing, why tests are not there.

00:21:51.660 | Is it because there are no reagents?

00:21:53.340 | Is it because there are not enough PCR machines?

00:21:55.820 | Can we get together?

00:21:56.900 | There are so many researchers who can donate.

00:21:58.900 | I contacted a local health health authorities.

00:22:02.940 | I know they're doing contact tracing of patients.

00:22:05.540 | And I said, I have experience experience in medical industry.

00:22:09.740 | Can I can at least volunteer?

00:22:11.780 | We could do contact tracing.

00:22:13.260 | And I really don't.

00:22:15.140 | And I I'm just telling you what I'm observing.

00:22:17.580 | I'm observing that I'm not worried about the future because I feel like it's it gives me

00:22:24.060 | meaning in life if I help to solve it.

00:22:27.500 | Like my brain goes to the place where we should solve it, not hide, not.

00:22:33.500 | And I think that people are generally very good people and I'm OK to die if it's

00:22:42.740 | these people. And I'm sorry.

00:22:44.620 | OK. All right.

00:22:47.340 | I just want to say that it's like imagine wars that our grandparents took part in.

00:22:55.540 | Imagine soldiers.

00:22:57.780 | They go, for instance, and die.

00:23:00.580 | And you ask them how is it possible that they're not afraid?

00:23:04.900 | And of course, they're afraid.

00:23:05.940 | But I think something kicks in in our system that's bigger than us.

00:23:12.500 | And this pandemic is such a silly thing compared, let's say, to World War Two or one

00:23:17.540 | when people were actually dying and infrastructure was destroyed and so forth.

00:23:22.460 | And you see your children dying here.

00:23:24.580 | We're children are at least safe, more or less.

00:23:27.580 | And so I'm I just I did not expect it.

00:23:30.580 | It will make me so so.

00:23:32.540 | I wanted to share the fact that.

00:23:36.580 | That giving back and participating and fixing it actually can give you so much, so

00:23:42.580 | much strength and optimism because you feel like your life is full of meaning and

00:23:47.380 | cool. Sorry about that.

00:23:49.620 | Thank you, Josh.

00:23:51.540 | Amen. Yeah, I think that that's definitely if you study any tragedy, any disaster, it's

00:23:58.060 | a time when so many people can step forward and shine and you appreciate people and

00:24:02.900 | you appreciate things in a way that you often don't.

00:24:05.820 | It's neat to see in all over the United States.

00:24:08.020 | It's neat to see in a with a shortage of PPE, protective equipment.

00:24:14.500 | It's it's neat to see people stepping up and getting out sewing machines and doing

00:24:19.100 | those things. I used to talk to my grandparents some about World War Two and try to

00:24:24.340 | understand what life was like in World War Two, because I would I would study.

00:24:29.460 | You read about it in the history books.

00:24:31.740 | You read about, you know, people planning victory gardens and making up collections

00:24:36.140 | and you read about shortages.

00:24:37.220 | You couldn't get tires for your cars and all this stuff and factories being

00:24:40.780 | repurposed. And as I grew up, it was just a sense of unified common purpose that I

00:24:47.500 | could not imagine.

00:24:49.220 | It was just a sense that I could not imagine.

00:24:51.860 | And I would talk to them about it.

00:24:54.940 | And I have often wondered, could that ever come back?

00:24:59.100 | You know, you look at the United States and so many countries around the world, you

00:25:01.740 | look at the United States and it just seems so entirely fractured.

00:25:05.180 | And you wonder, can things come back?

00:25:07.100 | And on a national level, I don't think so.

00:25:09.540 | But in your local community, when you recognize that your neighbors are on the left

00:25:13.700 | and the right of you and you go down to your local hospital or you look in the local

00:25:18.220 | community, then you can still have that sense of let's work together and let's beat

00:25:22.860 | this thing. And it's exciting to see that experience.

00:25:25.420 | I know many people reflect on events like 9/11 and they appreciate that sense of

00:25:29.100 | camaraderie, that sense of unity that was hard to find in previous times.

00:25:33.740 | And so I agree.

00:25:37.260 | I think it's great to have that.

00:25:39.540 | And to your overall point about ignoring the information and not watching the news,

00:25:46.460 | it was fascinating. The World Health Organization came out with an official advisory

00:25:50.380 | last couple of days. Don't watch the news or you'll feel it'll be something like

00:25:54.860 | that. Don't watch the news. It'll depress you.

00:25:56.580 | And I think that's generally good advice.

00:25:58.420 | I try to pay attention to it because I feel like a responsibility to filter it and

00:26:04.780 | to share with others. But at the end of the day, the only reason you really need

00:26:08.380 | information is to affect your behavior.

00:26:10.660 | And so you need enough information to affect your behavior and then go from there.

00:26:14.500 | And in a time like this, you don't need all that much.

00:26:18.060 | And there is a real beauty to day to day life.

00:26:20.300 | There is a beauty to playing with your children.

00:26:22.380 | There is a beauty to taking a walk outside.

00:26:25.500 | And I see a lot of people enjoying those things.

00:26:28.060 | And so may we all do that and engage with that more and more.

00:26:33.380 | So thank you for contributing, Anne.

00:26:34.580 | Did you have a question or any other comments before I go on to the next caller, Anne?

00:26:38.100 | No, just thought I'll share it and maybe someone out there who is listening or

00:26:45.260 | participating in the call feel the same way.

00:26:48.300 | And I hope that they know that there are many people like us.

00:26:51.900 | Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you.

00:26:53.660 | And I do thank you for sharing that.

00:26:55.220 | And I've thought I've hoped that I did an okay job talking about,

00:27:00.140 | you know, talking about things without getting too, you know, too

00:27:05.620 | depressed. I felt bad last week going away from the show, but I do feel like

00:27:10.420 | there's a sense of realism that is important.

00:27:12.380 | But in the midst of realism, it's important to maintain an optimistic attitude.

00:27:17.260 | And I'll do my best in the future to do that, to be realistic,

00:27:21.420 | but also optimistic at the same time. We go now to Indiana. Welcome to the show.

00:27:25.260 | How can I serve you today?

00:27:26.100 | Hi, Joshua. Thanks for taking my call quickly. Anne, thank you for that call.

00:27:31.860 | I appreciate it. If no one but me and Joshua, at least there's two of us.

00:27:34.820 | But Joshua, my question was about, I called in last week and

00:27:39.820 | was kind of on the wrong topic. It was COVID day.

00:27:42.820 | But I feel like I have what for lack of a better term,

00:27:46.260 | I would call a working class mentality. Grew up with, you know,

00:27:49.420 | most of my family and relatives have been hourly workers of one sort

00:27:54.420 | or another, or very low level managers,

00:27:56.180 | not a lot of professionals, doctors, lawyers, et cetera.

00:27:59.340 | And I feel like there is something that I am maybe missing in that,

00:28:04.660 | in my mentality, as opposed to

00:28:07.140 | having a mentality where I've been more exposed to that.

00:28:11.660 | So just curious of your thoughts on that and how to, how to change that.

00:28:17.460 | Yeah. So I thought about this last week and I thank you for calling back.

00:28:20.660 | It is nice to get away from COVID and talk about something else.

00:28:23.460 | So first I don't have a perfect answer because this is a change that I've,

00:28:29.660 | I've had to make myself. And I'll tell you just a short story.

00:28:33.860 | When I was a financial advisor, I, I started when I was 23 years old.

00:28:38.980 | I didn't come from a wealthy family. We were middle-class.

00:28:42.660 | We were culturally upper middle-class, but financially middle-class.

00:28:47.660 | We had a one income family. My dad was an engineer, but he didn't,

00:28:50.940 | he didn't work. He didn't make tons and tons of money.

00:28:53.180 | And we always had our needs met, but we didn't live the high lifestyle that we

00:28:58.260 | didn't live a high consumption lifestyle. We, we had, we weren't poor.

00:29:02.460 | We didn't have cars that were breaking down all the time.

00:29:05.020 | We didn't worry about,

00:29:05.980 | I didn't ever worry about getting evicted out of an apartment like so many

00:29:09.060 | people do. My, my, my, my dad had a lot of flexibility. You know,

00:29:13.780 | he worked from home before that was even popular.

00:29:16.940 | He had, he traveled all over the world.

00:29:19.260 | But we, I didn't grow up in, in kind of the glitterati. I didn't grow up.

00:29:23.740 | We didn't have a boat. We didn't go out on the weekends on the boat. I did.

00:29:26.340 | We didn't go to the country club. You know, our vacations were,

00:29:29.820 | were rather modest. We didn't go out to eat a lot. And so I came from, from,

00:29:33.740 | from more humble financial background.

00:29:38.820 | And I never really thought much about it until I became a financial advisor.

00:29:42.820 | And when I was a financial advisor, I worked hard,

00:29:44.940 | but what I focused on was I focused on technical expertise.

00:29:47.980 | I studied hard to, to know how to give people good answers on,

00:29:52.100 | on tax planning or on financial planning. That was where my skillset was.

00:29:55.460 | Then along the way somebody else joined my firm and this young man who joined

00:30:01.020 | the firm, he joined right out of college and it was his first,

00:30:05.620 | it was his first job right out of college.

00:30:08.420 | He had never worked all throughout college, all throughout high school.

00:30:12.940 | I had worked jobs, all kinds of jobs all throughout college and high school.

00:30:16.620 | He'd never had a job. His dad was a very wealthy attorney,

00:30:21.620 | extremely highly paid, I think a litigator, but I'm not sure,

00:30:24.900 | but extremely highly paid from the upper Northeast, kind of from that, that,

00:30:29.340 | that culture in the upper North, upper,

00:30:31.060 | and I can't remember if it was New York or Boston and I don't remember exactly,

00:30:34.380 | but it was from that culture. They had a place in Florida. He had a big,

00:30:38.380 | a huge fishing boat, you know, a $300,000 fishing boat.

00:30:42.740 | And here was this young man who was 21 years old and or 22 years old gets this

00:30:47.740 | new job as a financial advisor. You know,

00:30:51.140 | he drives a BMW that his dad had given to him. He's got the boat,

00:30:55.300 | he's out on the boat every weekend, which in South Florida is of course a big,

00:30:59.620 | a big thing. And as I watched him, I was fascinated because from a, from a,

00:31:04.420 | from a, from a technical perspective, he was as a financial planner,

00:31:09.500 | in the beginning he was technically incompetent.

00:31:11.860 | Now he was a smart man, but he was technically incompetent.

00:31:14.660 | He didn't know what he was talking about. He didn't have an idea of the law.

00:31:18.700 | He didn't have an idea of things. And I would do, I would go on,

00:31:21.260 | I would go on appointments with him and you know, he, he,

00:31:25.740 | he didn't know what a Roth IRA was. And yet here he is,

00:31:28.980 | here he is with a financial advisor.

00:31:33.580 | He couldn't even explain the basics to people. And so I thought,

00:31:37.300 | there's no way this guy makes it, you know, there's no way that he,

00:31:40.220 | that he makes it in this business. Well, fast forward,

00:31:43.300 | not only did he make it,

00:31:44.460 | but he was one of the biggest producers that I ever knew.

00:31:48.820 | And to this day, he's still in the, the, the business.

00:31:53.620 | He's still in the financial business.

00:31:56.140 | He's sold millions and millions of dollars of premium of life insurance.

00:32:00.020 | And he is just massively successful.

00:32:04.020 | Now he studied over time. I left that business.

00:32:07.340 | I haven't kept contact with him. I've watched him from afar.

00:32:09.860 | He studied a little bit over time and I bet he's a little bit more technically

00:32:12.220 | competent.

00:32:13.060 | But the thing that I observed is that he had something that I never had.

00:32:16.780 | He had a comfort in he came from a different class of

00:32:21.980 | different financial class. And he looked at the world a different way.

00:32:24.940 | And he had a comfort of, of talking about money that I didn't have.

00:32:29.780 | I remember the first time I, I was showing a life insurance policy to a guy

00:32:34.820 | with a hundred thousand dollars of annual premium. And I did this thing and I was

00:32:38.500 | inside, I'm shaking in my boots because I couldn't imagine somebody, you know,

00:32:42.900 | paying a hundred thousand dollars a year for their life insurance policy.

00:32:45.740 | And this guy that I, that I showed it to was an entirely appropriate

00:32:49.180 | recommendation for him. It was,

00:32:50.940 | it was something that certainly could work out really well.

00:32:53.940 | As far as it was a good fit for him. It was, it was ideal in, in so many ways,

00:32:58.740 | but I was scared in my boots because I couldn't imagine somebody paying a

00:33:01.940 | hundred thousand dollars a year for life insurance. But this guy, you know, my,

00:33:04.700 | my, my client, I think he made five or $6 million a year. And it was,

00:33:08.180 | it was an entirely reasonable thing given the financial plan that we had.

00:33:11.380 | And my, my friend, he, he fit in that world.

00:33:16.660 | And so he didn't know anything about life insurance. I was bothered by,

00:33:20.420 | I was totally bothered by all the technical things.

00:33:23.860 | I'm usually buy term insurance and, and,

00:33:25.380 | and all the arguments about, well, this is superior and that's superior.

00:33:28.140 | My friend was ignorant of all of that,

00:33:29.740 | but he flowed in that world in a way that I didn't have a clue how to flow.

00:33:34.220 | And he sold so much insurance left, right, and center.

00:33:37.660 | He had all his, his, his parents' contacts and,

00:33:39.940 | and he was a huge producer and is still today a huge producer,

00:33:43.580 | even though his technical knowledge is, I hope this doesn't sound arrogant,

00:33:47.820 | but probably, you know, a 10th of mine. And I've, I've,

00:33:50.500 | I've pondered that over the years and I thought, what, why?

00:33:54.620 | Like, why does the world work that way?

00:33:57.180 | Why is it that some people have this, this experience and this,

00:34:01.500 | this mindset and why is it so hard for some of the rest of us to learn?

00:34:06.420 | And you, and when you, when you go and you start studying the,

00:34:09.140 | the mindset of money I have observed that there are those who,

00:34:13.220 | who have a hard time adapting to the mindset of money.

00:34:17.220 | And there is those who don't.

00:34:18.820 | And you can't deny the impact of your upbringing on yourself.

00:34:23.300 | You can't deny the fact that the circumstances that you were raised in make it

00:34:28.300 | give you a different perspective. Now I still, you know,

00:34:32.780 | there are a lot of people who are raised in very wealthy families that are

00:34:35.660 | wonderful human beings. There are a lot of parents, though they be wealthy,

00:34:39.460 | who, who have, have succeeded in raising wonderful humans.

00:34:43.940 | And I love, you love being around those people.

00:34:46.900 | There are people who are warm that are generous, that are kind, et cetera.

00:34:49.740 | And then of course, as with anything, there are people who are not.

00:34:52.020 | So I don't think that money has to be the key in terms of that.

00:34:57.420 | You can't raise a great kid. If you're, if you're rich, you obviously can.

00:35:00.340 | And then I think that often people are overly critical just simply through the

00:35:03.460 | jealousy of the wealthy. But I do also often appreciate the,

00:35:08.460 | the appreciate those who have started with humble beginnings and who've become

00:35:14.580 | very wealthy because they often have a kind of a different sense.

00:35:19.980 | They appreciate it, but they also have had to learn new things.

00:35:23.420 | And I've been learning over the years.

00:35:25.820 | I've learned some of those things for myself. And so here's,

00:35:28.540 | so that was kind of a backstory to say,

00:35:30.540 | I don't know exactly the answer cause I'm still learning it.

00:35:32.900 | But as I have grown in my personal wealth,

00:35:36.860 | as I have grown in my money making ability,

00:35:39.100 | I've realized how hard it is for me to imagine just simple things like money

00:35:44.220 | flowing easily.

00:35:45.100 | You can earn money in a hard way and you can earn money in an easy way.

00:35:49.580 | And depending on your history and your background,

00:35:52.060 | you often look at these different solutions.

00:35:53.940 | And yet there are lots of people who earn money very easily.

00:35:57.500 | And you can earn a lot of money.

00:35:59.620 | One of the things that I've taken to doing it for myself and for others is I've

00:36:03.580 | realized that one of the most valuable things that I can do is to help somebody

00:36:07.580 | extend their vision. Now I'm growing increasingly confident of this,

00:36:11.940 | but I still can't even do it for myself.

00:36:13.740 | I have to have friends and coaches and people who come alongside me who say,

00:36:18.420 | Joshua, you're thinking small. Why are you thinking so small? Why?

00:36:23.180 | Because in a lot of times we have these, I hate the term, I hate the term,

00:36:27.540 | but it is true. We have these limiting beliefs, these ideas,

00:36:31.420 | these scripts that are put within us

00:36:33.540 | based upon our experience.

00:36:37.180 | And I think the important thing is to look at that and study and say,

00:36:41.100 | you know what? There's no reason why this has to be that way. You know,

00:36:44.740 | I don't have to believe this limited idea. And that's where,

00:36:49.220 | I don't know how to teach it because I'm still learning it.

00:36:54.860 | But I'll tell you some things that have been helpful for me,

00:36:57.060 | specific tactics now. Number one,

00:36:59.420 | is I've always found it helpful to learn from the experiences of others.

00:37:03.540 | Now when I was growing up, I did that through reading,

00:37:06.580 | and I think you could still do it through reading.

00:37:08.180 | But one of the major improvements in our modern world is the ability for one

00:37:12.980 | person on one side of the world to access someone on the other side of the world.

00:37:15.980 | And you can find people that have a very different experience and look at the

00:37:19.380 | world differently. You can listen to them and you can kind of learn from their

00:37:23.180 | idea and from their mentality. And so I find that to be useful.

00:37:26.420 | Number two is by association. One of the big, most valuable things,

00:37:30.620 | it's just somebody to associate with people who have a different understanding

00:37:34.420 | of life. When I was a financial advisor,

00:37:36.700 | I used to have a group of friends who were financial advisors and we would talk

00:37:39.900 | about the fact that we could really only hang out with each other.

00:37:43.500 | We could really only vacation with each other because we had a different

00:37:48.660 | experience of the world because of our time

00:37:53.140 | independence and our lifestyle independence.

00:37:56.060 | And because we had a high income and because we

00:38:01.300 | had total control of our time,

00:38:03.940 | conversations would go something like this. It's like, "Hey,

00:38:08.340 | do you want to go hunting next week?" Or, "Let's take a trip.

00:38:11.900 | Do you want to go fishing next week?" Or whatever it is.

00:38:13.580 | Or, "Would you like to go out tomorrow?" It's like, "Hey,

00:38:16.100 | it's a Tuesday and would you like to go fishing with me tomorrow?" "Sure.

00:38:19.340 | I'll just cancel all my appointments." Right?

00:38:20.900 | And you cancel all your appointments, move them around and renegotiate.

00:38:23.220 | Half the time you don't even have to do that. You just say,

00:38:25.580 | you call your staff and you say, "Please cancel all my appointments." It's

00:38:30.180 | simple. And we would talk about how blessed we were to have that.

00:38:33.900 | But the fact that it was hard to associate with people who didn't because most

00:38:38.500 | people wouldn't look at the next week and say, "Oh, you know what?

00:38:41.220 | You got an extra spot on the boat.

00:38:42.780 | Let's go to the Bahamas and fish for a few days. I'll go. Absolutely.

00:38:45.340 | I don't even need to check my schedule. I don't need to check.

00:38:46.740 | I can renegotiate everything." And there was a difference.

00:38:49.540 | That was a different lifestyle than a lot of people experienced.

00:38:52.580 | But being around those kinds of people starts to change you.

00:38:57.420 | And so it's one of those things where you're affected by it because you're part

00:39:00.540 | of it,

00:39:00.740 | but you're also become more and more part of it because you're affected by it.

00:39:03.820 | So choosing carefully the kind of people that you associate with.

00:39:06.900 | If you associate with business owners,

00:39:08.820 | you associate with people who are financially productive,

00:39:11.060 | they look at the world in a different way. And this is where I'm very

00:39:16.820 | sympathetic to people who are just getting started because I know so clearly

00:39:20.260 | what that's like. And I want to be the kind of person who gets excited with

00:39:23.620 | somebody all along the way. But many business owners just look at the world in a

00:39:28.460 | way that, for example, with you, hourly employees can't even imagine.

00:39:31.860 | A business owner looks at the world and says, "If I do this,

00:39:35.340 | I can make another half a million dollars next year." And that's doable.

00:39:38.300 | But an hourly employee says, "I've got to make a raise by 5% and that's going to

00:39:42.820 | be my ticket to freedom." So association is really,

00:39:47.020 | really important. And then I think you can really very clearly,

00:39:50.180 | you can direct and change your mind.

00:39:52.500 | You can change what you create in the world based upon what you see.

00:39:57.820 | And that's where I've worked hard over the years to change kind of what I see

00:40:03.460 | over the world. And sometimes you have to identify beliefs.

00:40:06.180 | So I'll give you one for me.

00:40:07.020 | One of the biggest things for me in not being able to create kind of a really

00:40:12.780 | big future has always been the question of risk.

00:40:15.940 | You know, risk. I don't want to risk something. And for me,

00:40:19.700 | it often comes down to just seeing and having worked with people who are in

00:40:23.300 | difficult circumstances, seeing how impactful risk can be in lives, right?

00:40:27.180 | When somebody goes bankrupt, it can destroy a family.

00:40:29.340 | And since I consider family to be sacrosanct,

00:40:32.660 | I consider marriage and my children to be one of my highest priorities in life,

00:40:37.300 | I wouldn't want to risk something for my children based upon that.

00:40:40.620 | And so I've often been much more conservative. Meanwhile,

00:40:43.220 | there's people out there that just don't even consider risk.

00:40:45.420 | I think the right solution is somewhere in the middle, right?

00:40:47.900 | Where you consider risk and you plan for it.

00:40:49.460 | But what I've done is I've imagined different scenarios.

00:40:53.260 | And then I think about how do I protect the downside?

00:40:56.620 | So why do I teach so much about asset protection planning?

00:40:59.340 | Because if you understand asset protection planning,

00:41:01.220 | you understand that if your business fails or you go bankrupt,

00:41:04.580 | you don't have to be destitute. There's no reason for it.

00:41:07.180 | And that's something that most people don't grasp is that you can use the

00:41:12.020 | laws to your effect. And so I found just by reading,

00:41:16.100 | by association, by intentionally feeding my head different

00:41:21.420 | pictures, that there's a real value to it.

00:41:24.700 | One of the hardest things for me to let go has just simply been not being cheap

00:41:29.460 | in everything. And I think this is a common experience that many people face.

00:41:34.540 | But that you have to learn at some point not to be cheap.

00:41:38.380 | Now frugality is important at every stage.

00:41:42.500 | If you are earning $7.50 an hour, you can't, I don't believe,

00:41:47.100 | maybe I'm wrong, right? But I don't believe you can just say, well,

00:41:49.380 | I'm just not going to be cheap. I'm going to be spendy.

00:41:52.500 | And I'm going to create the reality. Well, I've never seen that work.

00:41:55.540 | I've never heard of that working.

00:41:56.540 | Somebody goes out and gets a credit card and starts buying a bunch of stuff.

00:42:01.060 | So they look fancy.

00:42:01.900 | I was talking with a young man recently about a cell phone.

00:42:04.060 | He was like, my goal is to have a fancy cell phone.

00:42:06.020 | And I said, well, you know, I appreciate that.

00:42:10.100 | And I tossed him my thousand dollar cell phone.

00:42:12.340 | And I said, here's a thousand dollar cell phone.

00:42:14.140 | I said, when I bought this, it was expensive and it was fancy.

00:42:17.020 | But let me tell you that that kind of just consumption is not the key to

00:42:22.260 | happiness or anything. I said, it's a phone.

00:42:24.460 | And as soon as you buy it,

00:42:25.340 | you think right now that having this fancy phone is going to fulfill you.

00:42:29.420 | It's not. I said that if you keep with that mindset,

00:42:33.420 | it just continues to, I got to have one more thing that's going to fulfill me.

00:42:36.060 | And then I talked with him about some of the things that I have found to be

00:42:39.020 | helpful. And I said, you can have a thousand dollar phone,

00:42:41.180 | but the biggest mistake that a 17 year old makes is going out and spending a

00:42:44.980 | thousand dollar phone after tax.

00:42:46.580 | You should know your business should own every single phone you ever use.

00:42:49.820 | Every single computer should always be bought by your business.

00:42:52.780 | Like you're a fool if you're paying for that stuff out of your personal checking

00:42:55.620 | account. And I said,

00:42:58.020 | you need to look at the world a little bit differently and back to kind of being

00:43:02.460 | cheap versus frugal.

00:43:03.300 | You realize at some point that you've got to change what you're doing.

00:43:06.900 | And if you're not in change is uncomfortable.

00:43:08.620 | So if you can't look back at the last year and say, you know what,

00:43:11.740 | that doesn't serve me anymore.

00:43:13.260 | I've got to level up to this other belief or this other practice. You know,

00:43:16.820 | for me, I made a commitment a few years ago. I was like, I'm not,

00:43:19.540 | I'm not staying in cheap hotels anymore. I'm not going to do it.

00:43:21.900 | Because it's so destructive to my productivity that even though it's the

00:43:27.540 | greatest deal in the world, I'm not going to do it.

00:43:29.740 | And I think you get there more and more in your life where as you start to earn

00:43:33.220 | more and you intentionally adjust that and you intentionally, you know,

00:43:37.620 | change where you are, you better be throwing away the things that didn't serve

00:43:41.180 | you. I was talking with a client of mine last week and we were talking about,

00:43:44.660 | you know, things like mowing your lawn. And it's like, you know,

00:43:48.340 | on the one hand I have children. I want my children to see me mowing my lawn.

00:43:52.500 | I want them to know that I'm, I don't want,

00:43:54.780 | I don't want them to be detached from the things of life,

00:43:57.500 | but I'm not going to risk my life and my brain.

00:43:59.860 | And this client I was speaking with, he's a surgeon. He's like,

00:44:02.460 | I cannot risk my livelihood that makes me a huge amount of money by going in and

00:44:07.740 | mowing a lawn. Same thing as like with going skiing, right?

00:44:11.940 | It's like, I'm not going to risk going on a ski vacation. I have to have, you know,

00:44:16.340 | these hands and these feet and this body makes me millions and millions of

00:44:20.340 | dollars. I have to have that in first case.

00:44:24.260 | So I'm not going to do the mow the lawn.

00:44:25.980 | And what I've found over the years is I've found one of the most helpful things

00:44:29.420 | for me was some of Dan Sullivan's coaching on just simply time.

00:44:33.700 | As an entrepreneur,

00:44:34.780 | one of the things that I have found is that there's no real connection to the

00:44:38.460 | amount of work that I put in versus the amount of output that I get out.

00:44:42.300 | Years ago, I, and so I've learned to prioritize play.

00:44:46.300 | I've learned to prioritize relaxation because that keeps my creativity flowing

00:44:50.740 | so that I can help more people more effectively.

00:44:53.460 | The way I learned this was years ago with a podcast episode.

00:44:56.340 | I was sitting and I was just wrestling and wrestling and wrestling with

00:44:59.820 | something and I was trying to grind it out.

00:45:01.660 | I was trying to sit at my desk and just work, work, work, work, work, work, work,

00:45:04.180 | because that's the, that's kind of the working man's mentality.

00:45:06.580 | I'm going to sit at my desk and I'm going to work, work, work, work, work.

00:45:08.380 | And I couldn't, I couldn't even create the outline.

00:45:11.540 | I turned the microphone on and nothing worked, nothing worked.

00:45:14.100 | And finally I said, that's it. And I just quit. I said, I'm done.

00:45:16.740 | I don't, I'm not going to do a show today. I'm done.

00:45:18.580 | And I went for a walk with my children around the neighborhood.

00:45:20.580 | And while I was on the walk in about five minutes,

00:45:23.220 | I instantly, I instantly, while I was playing with my kids,

00:45:28.420 | I instantly had a blinding, like clarity around the topic,

00:45:32.940 | instantly in my head, the entire thing organized itself. I came back home.

00:45:38.100 | I spent three minutes writing down what was in my head.

00:45:41.660 | And then the next morning when I went back to my desk,

00:45:43.940 | I turned on the microphone and I recorded the show and it was a great show.

00:45:47.340 | And I learned that I cannot force things to happen.

00:45:51.340 | And so I've learned to play, to relax. And even with regard to money,

00:45:55.620 | I've had to change my mindset around it,

00:45:57.540 | which brings me to my final recommendation.

00:45:59.500 | I think the most effective way to change it is to set goals

00:46:04.980 | and to set big goals. I've taken again and again and again to advising people.

00:46:09.660 | It's like, why do you not have a 10 X goal for your income?

00:46:12.580 | And this is where if you come from a working class, I hate that term.

00:46:16.420 | Everybody works, but I, you know, the pot, poorer class,

00:46:19.740 | an hourly wage kind of thing. Many people's goals is,

00:46:22.340 | is to make another dollar on your income,

00:46:27.460 | which is awesome, right? That's great.

00:46:29.580 | But your goal needs to be to 10 X your income because that forces you to think

00:46:33.660 | differently. If you're making $20 an hour,

00:46:36.180 | the question is how can you make $200 an hour?

00:46:38.500 | Well, you can't do it by working harder.

00:46:40.620 | You can't do it by doing it just a little bit more.

00:46:42.660 | You have to do it by completely going in a different direction.

00:46:46.420 | And that was one of the things that in my own life that's been helpful is I can't,

00:46:50.980 | I can't force experience onto myself that I,

00:46:55.060 | that I don't have.

00:46:56.860 | I can't force a change of mind or change of beliefs if I'm lying to myself,

00:47:02.180 | I have to learn something where I actually believe it. I can't,

00:47:04.620 | I will not lie to myself.

00:47:06.100 | But what I can do is I can set goals that are aggressive, that are large.

00:47:10.900 | And then those goals in time, when you set them and you think about them,

00:47:14.380 | and you work on them, even if you don't know how to achieve them,

00:47:16.860 | they generally will pull you forward into the future because you'll start to

00:47:20.620 | adjust things. You'll start to take different opportunities.

00:47:23.300 | You'll start to move in a different direction in a way that you wouldn't have

00:47:26.940 | previously. And so if you're trying to figure out how do I change my money

00:47:31.940 | consciousness? How do I change these limiting beliefs?

00:47:34.900 | Reading, associating with different people, directing your mindset, analyzing,

00:47:40.900 | I think is good.

00:47:42.060 | But I think the simplest place to start is just by simply setting goals,

00:47:45.380 | goals that scare you. And so don't set a goal of making 10% more,

00:47:49.660 | set a goal of making a thousand percent more and recognize that I don't have any

00:47:54.340 | idea how to do this. But in time, you know,

00:47:56.860 | my brain will direct me towards the opportunities that are here.

00:48:00.260 | And so set the goal, think about it, think about what it would mean,

00:48:03.380 | even if you have no clue how to achieve it.

00:48:05.660 | And in time that path will start to open up. That's the best I got for you.

00:48:10.580 | So I'll give you the last word on that one.

00:48:12.020 | Thanks Joshua. I appreciate that. And I,

00:48:15.500 | I read the goals book that was the first on your reading list and that was very

00:48:20.580 | helpful in thinking that way. So thank you for that recommendation. Um,

00:48:24.300 | I guess if you have time for one short followup,

00:48:27.060 | I think one of my biggest hangups is I'm sensitive to the criticism.

00:48:32.220 | I feel I can just imagine a lot of my relatives listening to what you just said

00:48:36.900 | and saying, well, yeah, that's fine for those old fat cats. And you know,

00:48:39.740 | those wealthy guys that take somebody that changed the tires and somebody who's

00:48:43.340 | got to grow the food and we're never going to make that kind of money.

00:48:46.220 | So blah, blah, blah, screw them. Um,

00:48:49.140 | have you experienced that sort of, I just, cause you know,

00:48:53.020 | if I go home and I talk to my parents about my goals and they respond that way,

00:48:56.980 | that's going to be very disheartening.

00:48:59.420 | You have any experience with that sort of thing?

00:49:01.420 | Yeah.

00:49:02.260 | I think the first thing is I would never talk about my goals with people who are

00:49:04.900 | going to make fun of them. Um, there are people, and especially like,

00:49:09.140 | you don't get to choose the family that you're part of. Um,

00:49:11.460 | you don't choose where you're planted,

00:49:12.780 | but I don't talk about my goals that I have with people who are going to make

00:49:15.940 | fun of them. Right. I, I, just a simple thing, right? Right. Like I,

00:49:19.860 | I like to, I sometimes enjoy studying languages and I have an ambition to be a

00:49:24.860 | polyglot. That's one of my personal goals.

00:49:26.900 | If I go to a group of polyglots and I tell them my ambition, they tell me,

00:49:30.620 | this is great, man. That's easy. Yeah. Last year I learned German. Um, you know,

00:49:34.020 | right now this quarter I'm working on, uh, on Russian and then I'm going to pick

00:49:38.060 | up Mandarin, uh, Chinese in the fourth quarter.

00:49:40.220 | And so you just get this totally different idea versus where you go to the

00:49:43.660 | average person and say, you know, I'd like to learn six languages.

00:49:46.380 | I've got a list of eight. My personal, the languages I want are eight. Uh,

00:49:49.540 | those, that's what I'm, I'm, I'm working on. And so you go to a polyglot and I'm

00:49:52.860 | like, yeah, man, that's great. It might take you four or five years,

00:49:54.740 | but you'll get there. Um, then you're going to, it's going to be great.

00:49:56.660 | But you tell most people I want to learn eight languages and they laugh at you.

00:49:59.540 | So that's a non-financial thing. And, but it's, it's really serious. Now with

00:50:03.900 | money, same thing is that if you have an ambition to make a million dollars a

00:50:07.420 | year, don't tell that to somebody who's making $30,000 a year. Um,

00:50:10.980 | but if you go to somebody who's making, um,

00:50:13.100 | half a million dollars a year or a million dollars a year or a few million

00:50:15.780 | dollars a year, and you say, I have an ambition to make a million dollars a

00:50:18.060 | year. Say, absolutely. So tell your goals to people who are going to encourage

00:50:21.020 | you. Same thing with like being fat, right? Um,

00:50:23.380 | if you go to a personal trainer and you're really fat and you say,

00:50:26.500 | I don't want to be fat anymore, they're going to say, you can do it.

00:50:29.140 | Absolutely. Because they've worked with people and help people not be fat

00:50:31.780 | anymore. Whereas if you go to a fat person, they're going to tear you down.

00:50:35.340 | And so don't tell your goals to people who are going to make fun of them.

00:50:37.940 | You've got to protect that until you've developed the personal confidence to

00:50:41.860 | just look them in the face and say, okay, you don't have to believe it.

00:50:44.940 | But practically speaking,

00:50:46.580 | I would say also you've got to work through some of the ethical issues.

00:50:50.100 | And this is where people, many people have a real flawed ideology,

00:50:54.540 | especially around money. Um,

00:50:56.220 | if you see money as something that you get based upon exploitation,

00:51:04.020 | you'll never feel comfortable with earning a lot of money or with having a lot

00:51:07.980 | of money. And so that's one of the most destructive things that when somebody

00:51:11.980 | has this idea that billionaires should not exist, uh,

00:51:16.020 | they, they, they're,

00:51:17.900 | they're totally destructive to themselves and to society in general. Um,

00:51:22.180 | whereas my ideology, my philosophy is very simple.

00:51:25.900 | Money comes through service. And so if I can serve more people,

00:51:32.700 | then I can earn more money.

00:51:33.860 | And so for me that's entirely congruent with my ideology. Um, now that of course,

00:51:38.620 | comes out of Christian theology. The scripture is crystal clear as far as, um,

00:51:43.140 | the, the economic systems, et cetera.

00:51:45.300 | But I've known a lot of people who believe that the more money you have,

00:51:48.180 | the more people you've exploited. Now, I think simultaneously,

00:51:50.740 | you've got to, to, um, uh, watch out for those other, those other sides of it.

00:51:55.700 | For example, when I do the, I'm,

00:51:57.220 | I am furious about the stimulus and the bailout and whatnot happening

00:52:01.620 | in the United States,

00:52:02.460 | because what I see happening is a complete and total moral travesty where people

00:52:06.780 | are getting rich based upon exploitation.

00:52:08.940 | And so you need an ethical system that brings these things together.

00:52:11.980 | So if you're concerned about these things first, don't tell anybody,

00:52:15.660 | but then you have to build an ideology or an F and an ethical system, uh,

00:52:20.180 | in your, in your experience that allows you to know where does success

00:52:25.180 | come from and then allows you to work through that. So set the goals,

00:52:29.620 | work on it, and I'll continue to, uh, to try to help you with it, uh, here,

00:52:33.020 | um, on the show as we proceed forward. All right, Daniel in Florida,

00:52:36.900 | welcome to the show. How can I serve you today, sir?

00:52:38.340 | Hey, Joshua, thank you for taking my call.

00:52:41.900 | And I was really glad to hear your coronavirus update in the beginning. Uh,

00:52:46.180 | not least of all, because it exactly mirrors the way I'm thinking.

00:52:48.900 | So confirmation bias makes me happy.

00:52:50.780 | You're right. Absolutely. You're exactly right about all of it. You're a smart man.

00:52:57.780 | Along those lines, um, I,

00:53:00.100 | I have maybe an ethical question would be the best way to pose it. Um,

00:53:04.220 | and while I don't expect necessarily an ethical guidance out of you, um,

00:53:07.860 | I know that you and I think very similarly, um, with regard to,

00:53:13.220 | uh, politics and, and maybe, maybe you can use yourself as a proxy here.

00:53:18.300 | And hopefully this is interesting to members of the audience who I know kind of

00:53:22.460 | fall into the same category. Um, but part of this disastrous, uh,

00:53:26.740 | wealth transfer bailout is, um, the expansion of some,

00:53:31.740 | um, sorry, brain fart here, uh, of some, some unemployment insurance,

00:53:38.500 | which I think is probably the least odious portion of it. Um,

00:53:41.980 | and I am self-employed. I work in the service industry. Uh,

00:53:45.060 | business is dried up.

00:53:46.340 | I'm either refunding a lot of business or business is getting kicked down the

00:53:50.740 | road until next year.

00:53:51.660 | And I'm not concerned because I'm early as a result of listening to the show

00:53:56.060 | since the beginning, uh, I have months and months of runway,

00:53:59.140 | so there's no concern here.

00:54:00.740 | But what I'm wondering is I'm technically unemployed and I understand from,

00:54:05.740 | uh, some people in my industry who,

00:54:08.500 | who aren't in a similar financial position that that is now being extended to

00:54:13.700 | business owners who are in a similar situation. Is it

00:54:17.340 | unethical of me to, you know, to be cashing these checks? Um,

00:54:23.780 | the way that I typically look at stuff like this is even though I'm not

00:54:27.340 | currently paying or assume I'm not currently paying unemployment insurance

00:54:31.700 | premiums I have in the past as a W2 employee, um, you know,

00:54:35.180 | my money and my children's money is being given to Boeing and to the cheesecake

00:54:39.500 | factory and all other sorts of things that I don't feel it should be going to is

00:54:44.060 | this just me kind of clawing my own money back, uh, so to speak. And, you know,

00:54:48.580 | if this thing does go on for a year, um, I'm, I'm going to be hurting too.

00:54:52.780 | So I guess the too long didn't read version is,

00:54:56.020 | am I gaming the system by, uh,

00:55:00.220 | getting benefits that I'm not necessarily currently in need of?

00:55:03.700 | I hate this question. Um, because it's, it has,

00:55:09.700 | it's so difficult and it's so fraught. Um,

00:55:13.740 | in 2008 I was laid off from a job.

00:55:19.780 | I was working for a marketing and brand management consulting company and they

00:55:24.020 | laid me off. I don't think it was, it was right.

00:55:26.580 | It was just a little bit before the recession happened.

00:55:29.500 | And so I don't think they laid me off because of the recession as I understood

00:55:33.140 | it and think to be true.

00:55:34.140 | They laid me off just simply because they chose to reorganize the company.

00:55:37.660 | I had been hired into the job.

00:55:39.140 | It was kind of a middle level job and the company,

00:55:40.740 | it just wasn't really working.

00:55:41.860 | And so they got rid of me and several of my coworkers simultaneously.

00:55:46.580 | Now prior to that time I had worked really hard to stabilize my personal

00:55:50.660 | finances. I was out of debt. I was doing the Dave Ramsey plan.

00:55:53.540 | I was out of debt. I was at a six month emergency fund in the bank and I was,

00:55:57.060 | I worked hard to make that happen. I paid off all my student loans.

00:56:00.020 | I was just out of college. I had, uh, I'd worked really hard and I,

00:56:03.500 | I felt really good and I felt confident about the work that I had done in my own

00:56:07.820 | personal finances. And, um,

00:56:10.500 | I was given a, a severance pay. I forget how much now,

00:56:15.020 | but I had some severance pay from the company, which was also nice.

00:56:17.740 | It was the first time I'd ever experienced kind of the benefit of working in the

00:56:20.780 | corporate world where they give you a nice severance package when you leave

00:56:23.700 | instead of just, Hey, here's your last paycheck and get out the door. Um,

00:56:27.220 | but I didn't file for unemployment and I didn't file for unemployment even though

00:56:31.740 | I was eligible because I, I felt like I didn't need it.

00:56:36.740 | I felt I've always had this, I've wanted to be congruent,

00:56:41.140 | ethically congruent with the fact that I, uh, you know,

00:56:46.140 | that, that I can take care of myself. I believe in personal responsibility.

00:56:50.300 | I believe in not being a burden to others. I believe that,

00:56:53.580 | that needs should go, that money should go to people who need it.

00:56:56.780 | And I believe that money should go to people who need it voluntarily based upon

00:57:00.220 | the charity of other people. But I have, um, I have,

00:57:04.580 | but I didn't need it. Right. I'm an able-bodied man. I can work.

00:57:09.060 | And I just felt like it was, there was no need for me to do it.

00:57:11.500 | So I never went and filed for unemployment.

00:57:13.100 | Now in the middle of that 2008 crisis,

00:57:15.820 | they kept on extending unemployment and fast forward.

00:57:18.620 | I lived on my savings for a couple of years for a couple of months. I worked,

00:57:22.060 | looked around and that was when I started working as a financial advisor.

00:57:24.900 | Then here I am as a financial advisor and I started in the fall of 2008 and

00:57:29.980 | unemployment benefits went on, I think all through 2009.

00:57:33.580 | The timeline is a little fuzzy in my head,

00:57:35.620 | but they extended it for a significant amount of time.

00:57:38.380 | And here I go as a financial advisor and I had run out of money. I was,

00:57:42.060 | I burned through my emergency fund little by little over time.

00:57:45.300 | And then as a financial advisor, I was completely underpaid.

00:57:48.300 | I didn't make money right in the beginning.

00:57:49.780 | And so I was going through my savings and I ran out of money.

00:57:52.940 | And yet here I am working with people who are living on unemployment and they

00:57:58.020 | weren't trying to find a job.

00:57:59.340 | They were just sitting back and collecting unemployment. And as I,

00:58:02.940 | as I'm here, I'm trying to tell them about money. I'm totally broke.

00:58:06.540 | And here they are living on the beach in Florida,

00:58:08.940 | living on unemployment because they got laid off from their job nine months ago.

00:58:12.660 | And I got so frustrated with that. And I just thought, what a sucker I am.

00:58:17.260 | You know, why didn't I do that?

00:58:18.780 | Because if I had taken that time and I had spent that time focused on

00:58:23.740 | something else instead of focused on, on, you know,

00:58:28.940 | what's happening here, basically I was, I felt like a sucker. And I said,

00:58:33.580 | you know what, that's it. Never again. I'm always going to take,

00:58:35.820 | I'm always going to take it. Then I went back and I,

00:58:37.500 | and I looked at the ethics of, of unemployment.

00:58:40.380 | So my employer paid for unemployment insurance, not by choice.

00:58:44.420 | It was an insurance program and insurance policy that they paid into and they

00:58:48.420 | were given no option for it.

00:58:49.660 | They were coerced by the government into participating in that.

00:58:52.100 | I was laid off under all the terms of, of, uh, of the,

00:58:57.220 | the whole scenario. And in that situation, I thought, you know,

00:59:02.100 | why would I, um, why would I,

00:59:05.700 | why shouldn't I have taken it? And so I came to the perspective.

00:59:08.260 | I was like, I'm just gonna take it from now on. Uh, and then the same,

00:59:11.620 | I've had the same thing with social security. Like I don't like social security,

00:59:14.780 | but am I not going to cash my social security checks?

00:59:17.180 | And I had the same thing with basically all government benefits where I don't

00:59:21.020 | get a choice. And so if I don't get a choice, then why shouldn't I take it?

00:59:25.220 | And then the vindictive side of my personality comes out where I'm like,

00:59:28.620 | ah, you know what, this whole thing is going to collapse.

00:59:30.900 | I'm going to hasten the collapse and I'm going to screw the whole system over.

00:59:33.660 | I've for years, I've thought about, you know,

00:59:35.100 | I'm going to do a whole show on how to exploit all of the government systems.

00:59:38.500 | And I've just never wanted to do that ethically.

00:59:40.740 | And then all of a sudden I turn around and I see these trillions of dollars

00:59:45.740 | over the last day or two being given to these companies. And I'm furious.

00:59:49.900 | It infuriates me that they would, that they would do that.

00:59:54.540 | And I think that's it. Like,

00:59:55.500 | why am I trying to live this ethical life of not,

00:59:58.780 | not taking from other people, not still like, why don't I just get, get what,

01:00:01.860 | get me some and why don't I actually help individuals? Cause you know,

01:00:04.860 | Boeing doesn't need this money.

01:00:06.340 | Boeing needs to go bankrupt is what they need to do.

01:00:09.420 | Why am I sitting here worrying about, well, maybe I'm, you know,

01:00:12.820 | maybe if I create this content,

01:00:14.420 | maybe I would be unethical because I'm helping somebody who is,

01:00:17.820 | who is a broke to, to, to figure out how to,

01:00:22.140 | maybe I'm, you know, worrying about Daniel.

01:00:28.380 | What if I help Daniel sit back and live on, on, on unemployment? It's just,

01:00:32.460 | it's infuriating when you see the numbers.

01:00:35.340 | And so how I've solved it is just by largely walking away.

01:00:39.740 | And by walking away, I feel a lot freer,

01:00:42.660 | but I don't expect many people to do that. You can't, you know,

01:00:44.740 | you don't get an option if you're in the United States.

01:00:46.540 | And so I've walked away to two cultures that are freer than the United States.

01:00:51.060 | And that's helped me to do it. But you know, I still pay taxes.

01:00:55.140 | And so I intend to cash my check if they give me a check.

01:00:58.420 | So that's the background of the story is that I came to the conclusion that

01:01:02.700 | since I didn't have a choice in the law,

01:01:05.820 | that I didn't have a choice in them passing unemployment insurance,

01:01:10.180 | I didn't have a choice in it that I should have taken it.

01:01:12.500 | And I was a sucker in 2008 for not taking it.

01:01:14.980 | I could have done so many better things with my life and with my finances.

01:01:19.580 | If I had taken it, then just simply spending all my savings down,

01:01:23.380 | it would have been a lot easier for me to,

01:01:25.260 | to have lived on unemployment for a few months until I found a job and then had

01:01:29.620 | still had my savings to,

01:01:32.700 | than it was for me to spend down my savings and then be totally broke starting

01:01:36.780 | a job. Cause that was, that was really hard. It was really hard.

01:01:39.940 | And so I've, the ethics of it are,

01:01:43.420 | are generally unclear as far as like, I don't think that there's an,

01:01:47.460 | I don't think that since you didn't have a choice in the law,

01:01:51.380 | you didn't have a choice in establishing the law.

01:01:53.780 | You didn't have a choice in the coercion. All of your neighbors, right?

01:01:57.380 | If you voted for it, well, that's, that's an ethical problem,

01:02:00.260 | but all of your neighbors had voted for this, this coercive state.

01:02:03.540 | And so if you didn't have a choice,

01:02:05.780 | you're following the law along the way by paying your taxes and doing what's

01:02:10.060 | expected of you. You didn't have a choice in these

01:02:13.140 | representatives and what they have passed. And so I say cash the checks,

01:02:19.020 | cash the checks and then use them for yourself.

01:02:21.980 | And then if you have the opportunity to be free of the system,

01:02:24.540 | be free of the system. If not save the money,

01:02:26.380 | just put the money in the bank and save it and spend it on something else.

01:02:30.100 | And if you want to do something that's ideologically pure,

01:02:32.980 | then leverage it for something that's going to make the difference.

01:02:35.260 | So if you don't need the money just put it into your giving account and go give

01:02:38.940 | it to somebody who needs it more than you.

01:02:40.420 | If you want to invest the money into building a website that,

01:02:45.420 | that full of screeds against unemployment insurance, then go ahead.

01:02:50.380 | But I say if you're eligible for the checks while,

01:02:52.780 | while following the law so that you don't hurt your conscience,

01:02:55.940 | I say cash them and use the money.

01:02:58.340 | But I understand the dilemma that you're in. It's a really frustrating one.

01:03:02.740 | All right. I guess I'm two for two with confirmation bias today.

01:03:08.660 | So I appreciate that answer.

01:03:10.300 | You should call in every week and then we'll be,

01:03:12.780 | then you can get it every week.

01:03:14.260 | That's a good plan.

01:03:17.100 | All right. Thanks Daniel. All right.

01:03:18.740 | We go to, I don't know, seven two Oh area code. Welcome to the show.

01:03:22.220 | How can I serve you today? Denver, Colorado. Go ahead, please.

01:03:27.540 | All right. Denver, Colorado. We'll come back to you. It looks like Dave,

01:03:34.100 | you're up Dave. Welcome to the show. How can I serve you today, please?

01:03:36.260 | Hey Josh. Thank you.

01:03:38.780 | Thank you for your thoughts and comments over the past couple of weeks.

01:03:41.860 | Question for you about the way you're thinking about

01:03:47.900 | investing in this opportunity.

01:03:49.820 | You've said that you've been waiting for this in terms of an opportunity to get

01:03:54.300 | back in.

01:03:54.860 | And how do you think about doing that if it's into stocks

01:03:59.620 | in terms of actually deploying assets that are on the side and that now is the

01:04:04.220 | chance.

01:04:05.060 | So I don't intend to invest in stocks.

01:04:08.340 | I am disgusted personally by the stock market.

01:04:12.420 | I know that's a strong word. I'm not,

01:04:14.420 | I'm not asking anybody to believe what I believe,

01:04:16.820 | but even just the last this bailout I consider it just a giant wall street

01:04:21.780 | giveaway.

01:04:22.620 | I walked away from stocks and mutual funds a number of years ago,

01:04:27.180 | not because of any problem with owning stock, right?

01:04:29.500 | I own stock in my own companies and I'm happy to buy stock,

01:04:32.540 | but I walked away from wall street just because of the broad,

01:04:36.580 | complete immorality in the industry. As far as I see it,

01:04:40.660 | it's one of the most corrupt places on the world.

01:04:44.740 | If you look at the crony capitalism, what wall street,

01:04:47.860 | what wall street does is basically the most important person in a modern

01:04:53.820 | large company is the lobbyists who,

01:04:56.820 | who you have seen in full force this last week.

01:04:59.300 | They don't even make any pretense at this point in time of,

01:05:01.980 | of taking care of their company.

01:05:03.700 | And the U S representatives don't even make a pretense of pretending that

01:05:08.140 | there's any sense of personal responsibility.

01:05:09.980 | There's any risk whatsoever for a stockholder.

01:05:12.500 | And so I see it as a, as an incredibly immoral world with people within it,

01:05:17.500 | certainly trying to do the best, but in general,

01:05:20.580 | the system rewards unethical and immoral behavior.

01:05:24.340 | I also have a very deep concern about many of the industries that the companies

01:05:29.540 | are involved in their promulgation of violence around the world with many of the

01:05:33.900 | large companies that really bothers me.

01:05:36.060 | I have a deep concern about a lot of the ethics inside the companies.

01:05:40.820 | And I just came to a point four or five, three or four years ago where I said,

01:05:45.820 | I'm not gonna, I can't do this anymore.

01:05:51.220 | I can't have this on my conscience. So kind of the ethical thing,

01:05:54.420 | just like the previous question,

01:05:55.580 | I can't change the law about my requirement to participate in, in,

01:06:00.300 | in unemployment insurance. I'm coerced to do that,

01:06:04.460 | but nobody is coercing me to buy stock in a company like Boeing.

01:06:09.380 | Nobody is coercing me to buy stock in a company like Northrop Grumman, right?

01:06:13.820 | Nobody is coercing me into owning these companies.

01:06:16.180 | And so I don't want that on my conscience.

01:06:17.860 | Now I understand that's an extreme position. I'm,

01:06:20.100 | I'm expressing it very clearly here because I'm furious at what has happened over

01:06:25.020 | the last couple of days. I'm furious at the US government,

01:06:28.980 | taking money that has been extracted with threats of violence from individuals

01:06:34.140 | and from companies all around the country,

01:06:36.140 | and then turning around and writing huge checks to basically bail out Wall

01:06:41.140 | Street,

01:06:43.180 | both the financial players in Wall Street and the stockholders of these

01:06:47.940 | companies.

01:06:48.780 | And I consider that to be an absolute violation of the principles of,

01:06:53.620 | of the free market and completely destructive.

01:06:57.300 | And I don't want to be involved in it.

01:06:58.620 | So I have no interest or intention of going back to you know,

01:07:03.540 | the stock market. I have no interest in investing broadly in that system.

01:07:07.180 | I'm interested in investments that help people and not that harm people.

01:07:11.420 | So I can talk about it in a detached way of, okay,

01:07:13.940 | well let's talk about the market. You know, is it a good time to get in?

01:07:16.100 | But for me, I'm not, I'm not going into that again.

01:07:19.420 | Just because I don't want to be in, I don't,

01:07:21.540 | I don't want to arrive at the end of my life and yeah,

01:07:24.340 | I've got an extra couple of million bucks here, but it came at this,

01:07:27.500 | at this cost to me. Now I'm, again, I'm not saying you're wrong or that you,

01:07:31.260 | you behaved immorally. Those are my opinions.

01:07:33.620 | Those are my convictions and the reasons behind them.

01:07:36.140 | And I think that we're all free to do in a situation like this,

01:07:40.100 | what you need to do.

01:07:40.980 | So the technical answer just from a detached observer is I would say that a lot

01:07:46.260 | of it comes down to your time perspective.

01:07:48.380 | If you are looking to grab the exact bottom of, of the stock market,

01:07:54.060 | is this it? I don't think so. But it doesn't really matter.

01:07:58.660 | If you've got a list of companies that you're interested in,

01:08:01.060 | that you think you'd like to own, you know, 10, 15, 20 years from now,

01:08:04.460 | it's hard to believe that these companies that are so big and so influential

01:08:08.340 | will not be worth more in the future. And they're,

01:08:10.620 | they're in many ways fairly valued today. Could they still fall more? Maybe,

01:08:14.980 | but I've always been attracted to the longterm value investing proposition and

01:08:19.940 | to just simply buying companies that are strong and that, that are,

01:08:24.340 | that are good. And so I think there are some,

01:08:25.780 | some companies that are fairly priced at the moment.

01:08:28.260 | And so if you believe that they're fairly priced, I think that,

01:08:30.820 | I think that it's fine to get in. If, but, but I'm not predicting the bottom.

01:08:36.340 | I'm not putting the top.

01:08:37.060 | A lot of it depends on what I led the show out with of this analysis.

01:08:40.020 | And we just simply don't know what's going to happen here in the coming days.

01:08:42.780 | And so the market's going to, to respond to that. I am in the days to come,

01:08:48.140 | I am going to talk about though the market in general. And I've,

01:08:50.740 | I've spoken with some,

01:08:51.980 | some of my private clients just about this that I increasingly wonder because of

01:08:56.500 | some of these ethical issues, some of the monetary issues, et cetera,

01:08:59.220 | I do increasingly wonder about the longterm value of the stock market.

01:09:02.740 | The basic, the basic idea is always don't say this time is different.

01:09:07.700 | Right. And don't say, don't bet against America. But I, I, I, at this point,

01:09:12.500 | I reject those, those, those statements. They're logical fallacies.

01:09:16.380 | You can say,

01:09:18.180 | you can acknowledge the fact that the United States of America has been

01:09:21.340 | historically strong while also recognizing that there are lots of

01:09:26.020 | historically strong countries, cultures, et cetera,

01:09:28.860 | throughout history that have changed and are no longer so historically strong.

01:09:33.620 | You can look at that and you can say that this time you can say,

01:09:39.220 | don't think that this time is different,

01:09:40.820 | but you have to also acknowledge that this time could be different,

01:09:44.380 | that there could be changes.

01:09:45.940 | And I think that there are major systemic headwinds at the very least,

01:09:50.460 | but they need to be called headwinds,

01:09:51.820 | if not major opportunities for disaster in the future in the United States of

01:09:57.220 | America and for many of these companies.

01:09:59.220 | Now to the extent that things can continue to run as normal,

01:10:02.500 | where Wall Street rewards these companies for taking huge risks,

01:10:07.300 | where the companies pay no attention to thrift,

01:10:10.860 | pay no attention to preparing themselves for market downturns,

01:10:14.740 | but they just simply spend like crazy. Don't, you know,

01:10:19.060 | buy their stock back to enrich all of their directors and managers.

01:10:22.060 | And then to the extent that they are bailed out by the US taxpayer and by the

01:10:27.300 | Federal Reserve and the tax to the extent that the US citizens don't care,

01:10:31.780 | but just simply rejoice that the money's there in their 401k,

01:10:34.100 | maybe this will go on. You know, maybe it will,

01:10:36.700 | maybe it'll go on for my entire lifetime and it'll never collapse. But I,

01:10:39.620 | I really,

01:10:40.660 | I really wonder about how you can have a system that's so clearly unethical that

01:10:45.420 | rewards such, such terrible business behavior.

01:10:48.940 | I don't see how that continues with the same,

01:10:52.140 | the same sense of strength over time.

01:10:55.540 | And that's where we get back to this moral hazard question.

01:10:58.100 | I'll try to cover this philosophically, but the moral hazard is real.

01:11:02.020 | I just compared 2008 to 2020. 2008,

01:11:05.540 | everyone said don't bail out the companies because it'll create moral hazard.

01:11:09.220 | And those arguments were largely ignored.

01:11:11.900 | Now at first they were listened to and then they were largely ignored because

01:11:14.180 | all the US congressional representatives got scared when they said,

01:11:17.100 | "Oh, the whole world's going to collapse." Well, David Stockman's book,

01:11:20.060 | The Great Deformation, that convinced me that it was unnecessary.

01:11:24.580 | Now maybe Stockman is not agreed on by everybody,

01:11:27.020 | but he convinced me that it was entirely unnecessary and that the people that at

01:11:30.420 | that point cried out to their representatives and said,

01:11:32.380 | "Don't bail these people out." They were right.

01:11:34.060 | And the representatives were wrong. Well, now in 2020, what do you see?

01:11:37.500 | You of course see a historic economic change,

01:11:39.620 | but these companies don't even bother to,

01:11:41.580 | they don't even make a pretense anymore. It's like,

01:11:43.340 | "Oh, let's go send our lobbyist and get some money." It's, to me,

01:11:46.580 | I find it disgusting. So I don't,

01:11:48.740 | I'm disinterested in the subject except from a trading perspective and I'll let

01:11:52.980 | other people do that. What I am,

01:11:54.580 | I do think that there will be opportunities in the real estate market.

01:11:57.380 | I consider private business and real estate to be less ethically troublesome

01:12:01.820 | for me personally than those large companies.

01:12:04.860 | And so I'm actively looking for,

01:12:08.420 | I've been waiting for a recession so that I can build a real estate portfolio at

01:12:12.940 | reasonable prices.

01:12:13.820 | I've been hoarding cash and watching for that.

01:12:16.580 | And so that's what I'm looking for.

01:12:18.380 | But the problem is it's just simply too soon right now to be engaged in any kind

01:12:22.460 | of real estate discussion.

01:12:24.060 | The path ahead is so unclear and real estate is such a long

01:12:29.060 | timeframe that there's no immediate opportunity that's clear at the

01:12:33.700 | moment. So that's my answer Dave, probably not the answer you're expecting,

01:12:36.380 | but that's my answer.

01:12:37.220 | Yep, no, I follow and thanks for your thoughts on it.

01:12:43.100 | All right. My pleasure. We go now to, looks like Darson. Darson,

01:12:46.300 | welcome to the show. How can I serve you today, sir?

01:12:47.620 | Lost him. All right. We go back to Denver. Let's see if Denver is here.

01:12:55.420 | Denver, welcome to the show. How can I serve you today?

01:12:57.060 | Hey Josh, I'm here in Denver. I actually just logged in to listen.

01:13:01.620 | So no question today.

01:13:03.420 | No question today. Well, I think that wraps us up on terms of callers.

01:13:06.860 | So I am glad that, glad that you all called in.

01:13:11.060 | I hope I wasn't too strong with my language. I do, I do wrestle with that.

01:13:15.220 | Sometimes I'm prone to hyperbole just in my own thinking.

01:13:19.580 | I try to control that, but I've been forthright.

01:13:23.460 | I'll try to, as soon as the details become clear of this bill and the mechanism,

01:13:28.940 | I'll try to serve you with some information on that as far as the stimulus bill

01:13:32.180 | and how you can, how you can do that. But I guess in closing,

01:13:36.620 | as I create a little closing speech here, I would say

01:13:40.500 | one of the most important things to learn right now in this current economic

01:13:45.500 | crisis is just simply what a total house of cards we are.

01:13:51.340 | A little bit of vulgar language warning ahead, but I saw this,

01:13:56.580 | I saw this tweet by some random guy on, on Twitter and he wrote,

01:14:02.580 | he wrote this tweet. He says,

01:14:03.580 | "LOL we're a bunch of paycheck to paycheck employees living in apartments owned

01:14:08.380 | by paycheck to paycheck landlords and working for paycheck to paycheck

01:14:12.220 | corporations. LMAO whole economy full of broke bitches.

01:14:16.740 | Whose idea was this?" I just thought I couldn't set it better myself.

01:14:21.180 | I would have of course used less vulgar language,

01:14:24.220 | but so there's a truth in that that's pretty clearly expressed is if you

01:14:28.980 | thought that all of a sudden we're strong, just look around the world right now.

01:14:32.420 | What I thought I was, I've always thought, okay, Josh,

01:14:36.460 | you're too much of a catastrophist. You're too negative.

01:14:38.260 | Why are you being so pessimistic? Be positive, right? Everything go better.

01:14:41.260 | We're barely two weeks into this thing and I acknowledge the widespread in the

01:14:47.900 | United States. I mean, we're barely two weeks into like the shutdowns,

01:14:53.100 | the lockdowns, et cetera. I acknowledge the widespread hurt.

01:14:57.380 | I feel that deeply emotionally,

01:14:59.660 | I'm very filled with empathy for those who are hurting.

01:15:03.700 | I want to serve you if you're hurting. I know that we're all hurting.

01:15:06.940 | We all know people who are losing their jobs.

01:15:09.260 | I have a lot of listeners in this audience who've had to lay off huge staff

01:15:14.260 | and that's distinctly painful.

01:15:16.980 | I remember the first time I laid somebody off and I just thought like this is

01:15:20.580 | huge. I remember just the weight of that. I never had a lot of employees.

01:15:24.660 | You think about the weight of an entrepreneur who's supporting dozens or

01:15:29.060 | hundreds of families with their business and they have to go and lay people off.

01:15:32.460 | It's difficult. It's awful for the employees. It's awful for the employers.

01:15:36.580 | It's terrible.

01:15:37.420 | But we're not even two weeks into these widespread shutdowns and lockdowns.

01:15:43.060 | And yet in the middle of that, everyone's got to come running for,

01:15:50.540 | everyone's got to come running for money.

01:15:53.180 | I expect this to get worse economically.

01:15:56.020 | I'm optimistic and hoping for the best in the virus and I'm hoping that this

01:15:59.100 | cannot be, you know, one of those generation defining events like previous

01:16:04.060 | depressions, like previous flu outbreaks, et cetera. I'm hoping it's not that.

01:16:07.740 | I'm prepared for it, but hoping it's not that. But at the end of the day,

01:16:12.020 | even if we get things better, look around.

01:16:14.660 | If this turns out to be a short term scenario,

01:16:17.780 | we're a bunch of paycheck to paycheck employees living in apartments owned by

01:16:22.660 | paycheck to paycheck landlords and working for paycheck to paycheck to

01:16:26.660 | corporations. Whole economy from top to bottom,

01:16:31.180 | full of broke people. That doesn't inspire a lot of confidence in me.

01:16:34.940 | When in less than two weeks of a shutdown, you have to have what seems like,

01:16:40.380 | which is certainly it's an overstatement, but what seems like every company,

01:16:43.860 | every big company in your S&P 500 saying, we need money, you know, give us money.

01:16:48.060 | Now, of course that's an overstatement and exaggeration,

01:16:51.140 | but that's kind of the feeling that you get. It's like,

01:16:54.220 | well let's send our lobbyists and let's go get some money.

01:16:56.100 | Where's that money come from? Right? It's all made up. It's all fake.

01:17:00.900 | It's all printed. $2 trillion stimulus bill.

01:17:04.500 | You didn't earn that. You didn't pay for it.

01:17:07.820 | Government was already a trillion dollars in debt. Sorry, trillion dollar deficit,

01:17:11.780 | already a trillion dollar deficit.

01:17:13.140 | So it was add another 2 trillion on it while simultaneously the GDP declines by,

01:17:17.100 | you know, whatever percent, 20%, 30%, who knows.

01:17:19.500 | And tax revenue is going to go down. So I mean,

01:17:22.900 | the deficit this year is going to be horrendous.

01:17:25.580 | And that's in addition to the trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars

01:17:29.180 | made up by the federal reserve. Now,

01:17:31.380 | I don't want to end on a catastrophic note. I want to be a voice of optimism,

01:17:35.460 | of positivity. I really do.

01:17:37.420 | But I think we've got to recognize what a nightmare,

01:17:40.820 | what an absolute nightmare.

01:17:42.860 | Now I'm grateful that personally I'm doing pretty well.

01:17:46.220 | And I'm grateful that I've received so many messages from you that have told me

01:17:50.100 | I'm doing well. You heard earlier, Daniel said, you know, I'm doing well.

01:17:53.660 | It doesn't take that much to be prepared for most

01:17:58.460 | catastrophes. You know, it's not that hard to have two weeks of savings.

01:18:02.100 | Anybody can have two weeks of savings.

01:18:03.740 | It's not that hard for most companies to have a few weeks of savings.

01:18:06.780 | Anybody can do that. Now, just because a company is laying people off,

01:18:09.780 | doesn't mean they don't have savings,

01:18:10.820 | but it's pretty shocking to see how fast things can change.

01:18:14.220 | So the key is preparation works. Financial prudence works.

01:18:18.900 | Being conservative with your money works. Planning ahead works.

01:18:22.060 | Choosing quality investments works. Everything works,

01:18:26.420 | but we're surrounded by people who,

01:18:28.620 | and a system that rewards the worst of behaviors.

01:18:32.420 | Those are my long-term concerns. Now,

01:18:35.580 | there's going to be opportunity left, right, and center through this thing.

01:18:38.100 | There's opportunity right now, possibly in the investing markets.

01:18:41.500 | I know there's a lot of people who've been waiting for a decline in market

01:18:45.020 | values to be able to get in. I don't think you'd be a big mistake.

01:18:48.340 | If you've got a, you know, 15 years and you're saying, what is 2035 look like?

01:18:52.100 | I'm not convinced that the world is going to fall apart and all these companies

01:18:54.860 | are going to collapse. Everything is still there. I don't,

01:18:57.980 | I'm not that catastrophic right now. I really not. So maybe this is, you know,

01:19:02.900 | if you're young and you want to invest in the markets, probably a good plan.

01:19:06.620 | It's hard to see, especially given the current scenario,

01:19:10.620 | it's hard to see those things not working.

01:19:12.620 | And when you've got the government backing up your investment,

01:19:15.420 | you got to say it's pretty good investment, right?

01:19:17.180 | Kind of like government backed mortgage loans, right?

01:19:19.780 | If the government's going to backstop you and you can't lose money and you know

01:19:23.380 | that your shares in Boeing corporation are never going to go to zero because the

01:19:26.340 | government will step in and bail them out. Well, you can't,

01:19:29.540 | you're not stupid for investing in those markets.

01:19:31.820 | And so it's probably a good thing.

01:19:33.660 | I think there's going to be opportunities increasing for new businesses,

01:19:37.340 | new business adjustments. There's going to be big,

01:19:38.900 | big changes in society from this, no matter what,

01:19:41.300 | even the most optimistic scenario,

01:19:42.940 | there's going to be change and change creates opportunities for those who have

01:19:46.100 | a mind for it. So be looking for that.

01:19:48.260 | Stabilize your personal finances as much as you can.

01:19:53.060 | Cash your checks and help your neighbors. That's the best I got.

01:19:56.260 | I am searching for something positive, but that's what I got. Anyway,

01:19:59.980 | in closing, if you'd like to join me for next week's Q and a show,

01:20:01.820 | I would love for you to do that.

01:20:02.580 | Go to patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance.

01:20:04.580 | Join me on that show.

01:20:05.340 | Patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance would love to talk with you next week.

01:20:09.140 | Last few days on my March madness consulting deal.

01:20:12.660 | If you would like to engage in a personal consultation with me,

01:20:15.820 | email me joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com and I will give you the details of

01:20:20.780 | that. My hourly rates are discounted from $400 an hour to $250 an hour.

01:20:25.100 | And I've been on the phone nonstop helping people,

01:20:27.420 | help people heading into bankruptcy,

01:20:29.660 | help people with huge amounts of money,

01:20:31.980 | help people with businesses that are booming right now and businesses that are

01:20:34.780 | failing. So if you'd like to work with me personally,

01:20:37.180 | reach out to me by email joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com. In closing,

01:20:40.860 | also, let me just mention again,

01:20:42.820 | I had a bunch of new people buying my how to survive and thrive during the

01:20:45.860 | coming economic crisis course. I thank you for that.

01:20:48.140 | Running a sale on all my courses.

01:20:49.820 | You can go to radicalpersonalfinance.com/store and then basically the last

01:20:53.820 | week, if you would like to buy my radical preparedness course,

01:20:56.140 | go to radicalpreparedness.com. That's very practical. 29 bucks minus 20%,

01:21:00.700 | whatever that comes out to be.

01:21:01.780 | You're not going to get a better deal off than that. I'm finishing that course.

01:21:05.620 | It's 24 bucks, super cheap. But I'm finishing that course this week,

01:21:09.420 | and then I'm going to reshoot it and the price is going to be a lot higher.

01:21:12.180 | So if you would like to get in while things are inexpensive,

01:21:16.740 | if you're a deal hound, go to radicalpreparedness.com and sign up for that course there.

01:21:21.060 | Radicalpreparedness.com. Thank you for being here and I'll be back with you soon.

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