Welcome back to Radical Personal Finance, the show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now, while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less. My name is Joshua. I am your host. And no, you did not forget to put your podcast player on 2x speed in preparation for my show.

One of the most common comments I hear from listeners with whom I interact in real life or on the phone, whether I'm providing a consulting call or a Q&A call is, "Wow, Joshua, I'm just not used to how slow you speak because I always listen to you at 2x speed." So no, you did not forget to put your podcast player on 2x speed.

Rather, I am slowing down for emphasis. I want you to pay attention to that introductory line with which I open most shows. Listen, welcome to Radical Personal Finance, the show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now, while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.

That, my friend, is my mission. Now, I don't claim to hit it all the time. I don't claim to succeed all the time. Sometimes I close the show and feel like I nailed it. Sometimes I close the show and feel like I failed. But that is my constant ambition, to handle that dual-headed mission, working with you towards a rich and meaningful life now, while also working towards a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.

I believe both of those are important. I think a lot about that mission. I think a lot about ways to accomplish that mission. A lot of this comes from a place of personal angst. So I come from the world of professional financial planning. I was an interested personal finance devotee, and then I became a professional financial planner.

And as a professional financial planner, I had a unique insight into many different spheres of the US American financial experience. I hobnobbed with the glitterati on the top floor of the local corporate buildings. I worked with the big-shot corporate C-suite level people, making millions of dollars. I worked with the people who were the inheritors of family fortunes of tens of millions of dollars.

I worked with big-shot attorneys making millions of dollars per year. I worked with a whole lot of more average middle-class people from every walk of life, from many professions, blue-collar, white-collar, middle management, entry-level. I worked with young people. I worked with old people. I worked with a lot of poor people.

I had the unique experience one time of, in the same week, talking finance with somebody who was formerly the richest man in the world, and also talking finance with a pretty broke Mexican illegal immigrant to the United States. I hate that word. Mexican immigrant to the United States of America.

Kind of eye-opening to me. I've thought a lot about what I've learned. I've also had this really strange experience of being very suspicious of the financial planning world. You'll often hear me when telling my story in an interview to someone else when I release them here on Radical Personal Finance.

You'll often hear me use a little joke throwaway line. "Before I was a financial planner, I thought brokers were out to make you broker, and an insurance was a scam." It's a throwaway, kind of slightly moderately funny line, as long as you don't analyze it too much. But it's really true.

I really hated the world of financial planning until I got into it. And then I saw all the good that the world of financial planning provides, and then I got out of it. I see a lot of the problems, a lot more, that financial planners engage in. Someday I'll talk about that.

But I feel like it's taken a number of years for me to get most of that financial planning blood out of my system, terminate most of my relationships to where I can look at it and try to assess things more clearly. But I think a lot about solutions because we live in a world of problems and everybody is proffering their solution.

And I think a lot of the solutions are pretty half-baked. I was simultaneously saddened and affirmed, I guess, that, "Yeah, I was right. I wanted to say I told you so. I'm telling you now." With the news in the past few weeks, past month or two, that the federal government is closing down the MyRA program.

Remember that one? President Obama touted it in one of his State of the Union addresses. And it was supposed to be the solution for poor people who don't have access to a good 401(k) or a good IRA to be able to participate in the MyRA program and save for their retirement.

I thought at the time it was dumb. I thought it was dumb all the way through and I still think it was dumb. But I'm also sad that it didn't work because poor people have a lot of problems. I don't think there was anything that the MyRA did about it.

I was a little bit suspicious of the motives involved in it all. And I'm kind of sad it didn't work, but I'm not surprised. But guess what? Our current financial system, the whole thing is pretty much broken. Now, it works for a few people, and I'm not saying you can't work it.

But if you think the financial system is working, well, my friend, you're probably...it's working for you. But there's a good chance it's working for you because you're one of the ones who set it up to work for you. Because for most people, it's just not working. Here's a test of your knowledge.

If you were to take a random sampling of 10 US Americans taken at random out of the population, adults, and you were to ask how many of them, how many of those 10 US Americans could lay their hands on a thousand bucks, a thousand bucks, without having to borrow it.

Given them a day or two. Do you know the answer? Depending on which data set we use, the answer is about three. Only about three of the 10 could lay their hands on a thousand bucks without borrowing it. That is absurd. That has to change. If we use that $500 number, again, depending on which data set we use, which particular study we cite, I don't have a lot of confidence in a lot of these studies.

But this particular trend seems to hold true in most of the studies that are related to this topic. Some like six out of 10 Americans couldn't come up with 500 bucks. That's in a world where the median income, meaning 50% earn less and 50% earn more, the median income in the United States of America is just under $60,000 a year right now.

Out of a $60,000 household income, most people can't come up with a thousand bucks. It's nuts. Now, I want to help. I don't have any illusions that I can help everybody, but I figure I can help a few people. And I think a lot about the solutions to these problems.

Today, I want to talk to you about one of the most important solutions for you to put into place that will help you to live a rich and meaningful life now and also put the framework in place for financial freedom in 10 years or less. And it's not a product you can buy.

It's not an app you can download. It's not a little trick in the tax code. It's very simple. Get your career and your income right, and you'll simultaneously do both of those things. For the last months, I have been pouring myself into trying to finish version two of the Radical Personal Finance Guide to Career and Income Planning, or as I like to call it, How to Earn Lots of Money Doing Work You Love.

This is really important to me, and this project has kicked my butt. It has been tough. And over the next weeks, I'm going to be doing a hard launch here of the course. It's not quite ready for you. I was hoping to have it fully ready today, but I have a few back-end things to fix up.

So I'll be launching that hopefully tomorrow to you. I'll be launching that hopefully tomorrow. And I'll be doing a lot of free content here on the show to try to help you with some of these solutions. But here's the simple reality. If your life is kind of broken, you don't really like what you're doing, you don't really like how things are going, you're kind of miserable at work, don't feel like you have enough money, a majority of those problems will be solved, not by a little budget.

Not by a little budget hack or a new piece of financial software, but by fixing your career and your income problems. If you get your career choices right and you get your income problems fixed, just about everything else flows. And we've come to the point where I think that every financial planner, before they ever talk about how much money do you have, how much money savings do you have, how much insurance do you have, I think just about every financial planner should say, "Let's do a career assessment.

How's your career going?" And if you get this right, it solves everything else. This is one of those structural things that is usually ignored because it seems so obvious, but shouldn't be ignored. And I want to give you today just a tiny bit of starting illumination on this topic.

I'm just throwing in on one idea, and it's simply this. You should build your career around a work life that you don't want to retire from. If you have to choose between doing work you love and earning lots of money, what should you choose? Well, you've heard people advise, "Well, do work you love and you won't work a day in your life." And of course, that advice is attributed to many people.

I've seen it many times attributed to Warren Buffett, who talks about tap dancing down to his office. But think about it this way. What if you have to give up money to do work you love? Would that be a wise choice? I'm convinced that if you love your work and your career, you'll probably be happy no matter how much money you're earning.

I use that word love advisedly. I don't buy into the idea that you can do work you're passionate about and every minute of the day just feels like constant play. I think there's work and there's play. I think there's a whole crazy focus that every moment of your life is supposed to be a peak experience.

Every moment of work is supposed to be sheer, unadulterated joy. If that's true, I don't know how to do it. So you should go find someone who does. I've never known anybody who would say that that's true. It's not true for me. And I doubt it'll ever be true for you.

But if you think I'm wrong, go find someone who does and tell me who can teach me and I'll shut up. I feel like I'm a better fit for what I do than just about anything else. I feel more confident that I've made good choices in my career. I feel really good about that.

I don't love every minute of it. It is tough. It is tough. But it means something to me. So in the course, I talk a little bit about loving your work and we'll discuss that more on another day. But think back to this duality of choice. If you love your work and career, you'll probably be happy no matter how much money you're earning as long as it's sufficient to meet the basics.

So that when the tire goes flat, you're not freaking out about how am I going to fix the tire. So that when your kid breaks an arm, you're not freaking out about how am I going to pay the doctor. You got to have those basic levels of income met.

It's a basic levels of savings. But if you love your work and career, you'll probably be happy no matter how much money you're earning. Now let's take the flip side. If you're earning huge money, but you don't love your work and your career, you'll find it hard to be happy no matter how much you're earning.

Have you not known people who earned a lot of money and were pretty miserable? Have you not observed that there are a whole lot of people that make a lot of money and commit suicide? Have you not observed that there are a whole lot of people that make a lot of money but seem to kind of have a life that pretty much is in shambles?

It's not that one is necessarily always caused by the other. You could have a great work life and a miserable marriage, and your happiness is not necessarily going to be fixed by your work life. But I'm not here to talk to you today about marriage. I'm here to talk about work.

So if you love your career and your work, you'll probably be happy no matter how much you're earning. But if you're earning huge money, but don't love your work or your career, you'll find it hard to be happy no matter how much you're earning. So clearly, if you have to choose between these two things, the intelligent choice is for you to choose work you love.

That's the smart move. But here's the cool thing. If you choose work you love, the probable result is, in time, you'll be able to figure out how to make a lot of money by serving people well. So you'll wind up getting the best of both worlds. A happy and fulfilling and satisfying work life and a big fat bank account.

But you can't pursue them in the wrong order. So over the next couple of weeks, I'm going to be talking a lot about work and income as part of the launch of the Radical Personal Finance Career and Income course. Hopefully it'll be ready for you tomorrow. But for today, here's my question for you.

Have you prioritized the careful selection and construction of your career? Have you chosen work you love, however you define that word love? Have you chosen work that you're passionate about, however you define that word passionate about? Have you chosen work that's meaningful to you that you care about? If not, as your financial advisor, I hereby authorize you to spend the money and the time necessary to get it right.

Stop putting money in your 401k so that someday you can sorta kinda hope to retire. And invest that money into placing yourself into a career that you love. If you love your work and your career, you'll probably be happy no matter how much money you're earning. No matter how much money is in your 401k, no matter how much money you're saving.

If you're earning huge money but don't love your work and your career, you'll find it hard to be happy no matter how much you're earning. So the simple, obvious choice is you should choose to do work you love and make the money fit after you've solved that structural problem.

But the cool result is this. Choose work you love and in time, you'll be able to figure out how to make a lot of money by serving people well. And you'll be able to get the best of both worlds. If you feel like you can say, "Yes, I'm absolutely already in this place where I know that I'm doing work I love," feel free to skip all of the shows that are coming in the next couple of weeks.

Or at least just listen in so you can teach someone else. But if you're not, listen in over the next couple of weeks. I'm going to give you enough advice in the context of these shows that you'll have a lot to think about and a lot to do. And of course also, if you want my help, well stay tuned.

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