Time to text the group chat because Barbados is now closer than ever. A beautiful island adventure awaits. And getting here just got a little easier. Warm up your winter and escape to our tropical paradise. Connect seamlessly from LAX with Cayman Airways starting this November. Immerse yourself in the rich Beijing culture, spirit, and of course food in the culinary capital of the Caribbean.

Sure, you can vacation anywhere, but we promise, vacations are better here. Look now at caymanairways.com It's Friday and today that means live Q&A. Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insights, 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 Sheets, I am your host, and on Fridays here at Radical Personal Finance we do live Q&A. Any Friday that I can arrange the technology to be sitting in front of an internet connection. We do a live call-in show, and today that is the plan. Works just like any other live call-in talk radio show.

It's so funny watching the growth of Clubhouse and reading about it. Everyone's all excited about Clubhouse. And I read a comment somebody made, it's like, "Oh, what we're so excited about is that we invented radio." You know, that we have this ability for people to call in and we have a host and people can listen live.

We invented radio. We just put it over an internet signal all of a sudden. Anyway, so yeah, we invented radio here at Radical Personal Finance as well. We do a live Q&A show every Friday. If you would like to gain access to these shows, you can do it by becoming a patron of the show.

You can go to patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance. Just search "Radical Personal Finance" on Patreon and that will pull up our Patreon page. You can join the support show there on Patreon and then that will gain you access to one of these Friday Q&A shows. Where we'll be able to talk about anything that you want to talk about.

Any questions, any comments, any snide remarks that you have, we welcome all of those things. And with that, we go to Andrea in the great state of Washington. Andrea, welcome to the show. How can I serve you today? Hi. So I have a question. I'm actually in Utah, but my number is Washington.

So we invested in a rental property just last year. It was a distressed seller. We thought we'd make about 50 grand and then we were going to sell out. Well, we just sold it and made over $200,000. Sweet! And now I'm wondering what... I know it was an awesome win, but it's all set to do at 1031.

But I'm kind of nervous about a 1031, given that the government's forgiveness of renters and just kind of expecting more inflation, expecting change in interest rates. I'm nervous about buying more rental properties, but I don't know what to do with the money. You always say, "If you have a better option, put it in a better option." But I don't know what that better option would be.

Do you have any suggestions? Of course. Put it all in Bitcoin. Come on. That's the answer. I know, right? All right. So let's pull apart these issues and let's talk it through methodically. First of all, congratulations. What was it that made this property so unexpectedly profitable for you? Okay.

So when we bought it, somebody was moving from our town and they had to sell it. And the other ones were selling for significantly more. So we just bought it from them thinking we could just flip it. But people have started moving here because we're an open... I mean, people don't...

Our schools are open. Things are open. We have a lot of people coming from California and Washington and all over. And the market is crazy. And that's part of why I don't want to reinvest because it's hard to find something. So when I try and find a home here or in other places I'm comfortable are pretty similar.

We've been doing 15-year mortgages so that we pay it off faster. But even at a 30, we barely break even if they're paying their rent. So I don't know. I guess what made it profitable is just that it's a really desirable area. Got it. Got it. Okay. So you have already sold the property or it's under contract to be sold?

So we have sold... We bought it at $385,000 and we put $62,000 down. Then we sold it at over... We sold it at $605,000. Awesome. And so with the closing cost in every state, we made like just over 300 ROI. Awesome. 300% which is fantastic. But we did pull out the $62,000 original investment.

And because we're high-earners, then we pay the whole 20% in tax. Understood. So if we did just fully cash it out, then we would have like $210,000 in pocket. If we rolled it into another rental, then we would have to spend like $545,000. Okay. So I don't know if I want $210,000 in my hand or $545,000 in the tree.

I don't know. Right, right, right. No, it's a difficult question. And so what I'm trying to do here is just pull it apart. So first of all, let's remember this. It's always fine to just hold money in cash. There is this strong feeling that people have often that somehow I'm doing the wrong thing by holding cash.

It's always fine to hold money in cash. It's always fine to say, "You know what? I had a winner. I'm not sure what to do with the money right now, so let me just put it in the bank and sit and wait and watch." You don't want to do that for year after year after year after year or decade after decade.

But if you are intent upon investing and you're just simply sitting on your investment capital waiting for an opportunity to present itself, it's perfectly fine to put the money in tax. It's also -- excuse me. I'm mixing things. It's perfectly fine to keep the money in cash. It's also fine to go ahead and pay tax.

So no question you can run the math, right, on how much you would save by rolling it into another property with a 1031 exchange versus going ahead and paying the 20% tax. But sometimes paying tax is the price you pay to have full control over your money. And so it's fine to pay tax, put the money in the bank, and wait.

I like to begin with that because I think some people just feel this unnecessary pressure that they've got to do something. And what you need to do is you need to look at the markets that you're interested in as dispassionately as possible and ask yourself, "Do I believe in this particular investment idea?

Do I believe in this thing that is presenting itself to me? Am I willing to go into it?" And if you're not, then wait because there are going to be plenty of opportunities that present themselves to you, and patience is a very important skill to practice. Now, of course, if you're going to do a 1031 exchange, you face a little bit of pressure.

We'll talk about that in a moment. Now, is there anything in your personal life or in your family's personal affairs that would be dramatically improved if you put the profit towards that? No. Okay. So we're purely talking about investments here. The only thing is we just have—yes, just investments.

We do have—I am also just—I feel really uncertain with the environment around us that I think most people do too, but with debt. Because we do have some debt on other rental properties. We have a little bit of debt left on our primary residence. But I feel like with high inflation, maybe that's not terrible to just hold it out for a little bit.

I don't know. All right. So let's talk about inflation. First of all, let's be honest with the numbers. If we follow the officially published numbers, there are no meaningful signs of inflation at the moment. Is that correct? Right. Okay. So we can be worried about the potential for inflation.

I'm concerned. But we need to keep ourselves firmly grounded in reality and say, "Hey, at the moment, based upon the official numbers, there's not a lot of signs of inflation." Now, I will share one little tidbit. It's interesting. A friend of mine sent me this as a note yesterday.

And this case came in yesterday. And he was sitting down and looking at his Zillow—he owns a lot of real estate in the Arizona marketplace. And he was sitting down and looking at the market rents locally. And he owns a lot of properties on a particular street. And back in 2019, the Zillow marketplace rent for those units was $700 a month.

Whereas today, in 2021, the Zillow market rents right now are $1,050. So there's been a 30% increase on rents in that area in a two-year period. And I would say that that's probably some of what you are involved in as well. And so on the one hand, we can look at the consumer price index and we can say, "Hey, it doesn't look like there's any big signs of inflation." But we always want to be careful of what's actually happening in the local area.

There's a good, solid indicator of inflation in the rental market in that particular place. So, now, future inflation, I would say, real estate is not a bad thing to own in a time of inflation. Your biggest question is whether we should have the debt paid off. Are you at a point in your family's financial life where if you just said, "You know what?

We have plenty of property. If we just reduced our risk and paid off debt, we would sleep well at night, we would secure our family's future, we have enough." Are you at a place where that would be a meaningful thing for your family to do? We've been super conservative with purchasing rental properties.

We don't buy anything that we can't… If everything was empty, on our salary, we could pay all of the mortgages every month. Awesome. Without anybody in rental. So, that's kind of how we do it. So, I don't think paying off the debt makes a difference as far as comfort level for me.

Okay. Okay. So, there's nothing you can spend it on in your personal life. There's not any kind of meaningful thing that you can do with the rest of your portfolio, pay off debt, etc. So, now, as far as I see it, you really have two choices. Choice number one is pay the tax, put the money in cash and wait for a better opportunity.

Choice number two is go out and look for a better opportunity and be convinced that whatever you're reinvesting in is a good investment. And so, I would just remind you, you don't have to… You could invest in your local market. Do you think that these local… these trends that have made such a dramatic price increase for you this time are likely to continue?

I think it'll kind of stabilize. I don't think we'll continue to see it shooting up, but I kind of don't think it'll sink. I think it'll kind of stabilize because we have such a shortage in housing and so many people coming. We don't even have anything… It's really hard to find something for rent and things come up for sale and they sell so fast.

And that's part of what makes me nervous is I don't want to participate in a hypermarket. I'd rather kind of watch it. I don't know. All right. Do you think… I don't know that it would continue like this, but… Do you think that your family should sell any of your other properties that you own to take advantage of this high market?

No. The other ones we purchased long enough that they're at a 15-year mortgage. And so, even at a 15, they're more than… The rent then covers our mortgage. So, we're trying to pay them all off as a source of passive income once we fully retire. So, I think those other ones we will hold.

Okay. So, I don't know your market. All I can say is this. I think that there are markets that change. And so, this is one of the things that's a little bit baffling to me about many markets, including the South Florida market, that I have followed the most closely of any market in the United States.

I thought a number of years ago that there was going to be a recession, and I thought that there was going to be a major decline in real estate prices in South Florida. I thought that I expected that in 2016, then I expected it in 2017, I expected it in 2018, I expected it beyond.

Didn't happen. Didn't happen, didn't happen, didn't happen. And so, I've really analyzed that deeply. I was like, "Why did I get it so wrong?" Even when there was a minor recession, basically, during the last year with a blip of COVID, the South Florida market was not affected. Why? Well, some of the factors, meaning the real estate market was not affected.

Why? Some of the same factors that you've mentioned. South Florida stayed open. They didn't impose the draconian lockdowns and whatnot that some other states imposed. They've been much friendlier for business. There's just been a much higher degree of organic demand. And as I've watched that market, I used to look at the market and say, "This is a fake market," because it was mainly built on retirees.

Retirees leaving New Jersey, New York, selling their houses there, moving to South Florida, buying up, etc. There wasn't a real industry underneath it. But what's happened in the last years is that there has come now to be a real industry underneath it. Whether it's the financial industry, you've seen a tremendous growth in the finance industry in South Florida, some other industries as well.

It's just become much more popular. And so I've actually changed my opinion. As I realized I was wrong about my predictions. And now I'm not nearly as concerned because I think what's happening in the South Florida marketplace is what we have evidence of having happened in some other places that are very desirable.

And so, you know, you think of a New York City or some markets in California or Chicago where there's just been this tremendous growth. And it's undergirded by good, solid growth of the financial space. And it just makes for a wacky market. Now I think this is hard to go through as an individual.

So, for example, when I watch it, I look at it and I observe that the prices change. And people who are used to a certain lifestyle are nervous about going through the transition. The South Florida marketplace used to be the place that was a fairly what I would call normal U.S.

American market. If you wanted to buy a house, you went and you bought a single family house. You bought a nice suburban, you know, three-bedroom, two-bath house. That was your standard thing. Well, those houses are unaffordable now for the so-called starter home. So, what's happening is the same transition as happens in other markets where people no longer expect to own a house.

They expect now to buy a condo or to just simply live a rental apartment lifestyle. The new housing units that are being built are much less – they are just a different lifestyle. They're not a yard with picket fence kind of lifestyle. And so, I think that when I've looked at the market, while I certainly still think that certainly there could be a big – could be a recession around the corner for all I know.

And there's no question that a lot of the buying demand is driven by low interest rates. When you have low interest rates, you have high prices. So, those things certainly seem to be true. But I'm not as nervous as I was three years ago because I see a strong market continuing.

And so, my question is if you look at your market and you say, "Yeah, this is good demand. People are moving here because we have an attractive lifestyle. There is real industry or real jobs. The cities and municipalities are providing the kinds of lifestyles that people want, the parks, the schools, etc." Then just because prices increase, I don't think that means that you need to be scared of the marketplace.

There's no fundamental anchor to prices as far as what people can do – what housing prices will cost except as it reflects on people's incomes. And so, if you're in a normal market, you have to look and say, "What are the wages of this marketplace versus the monthly payments?" And it has to be affordable.

You can't have a marketplace where a professional is going to be paying 70% of his income in rent. But I'm not scared of it just because it's increased. So, I would say you shouldn't be scared of it just because it's been an increase. You should look at it and say, "Do I honestly think that this is going to continue and this is a good investment now?" Remember that if you're going to invest, you don't have to invest in that area.

So, there may be another area that you know of that you think would work better. Maybe you could go ahead and do your 1031 into another place. And if you're not sure, then go ahead, pay the tax, keep the money in the bank, and wait until you're convinced. Because we're always in this place where we simply don't know.

So, we don't know what the economy is going to be like six months from now. We never know. I think there are good reasons to believe there could just be an absolutely roaring economy in the United States. I think there's also good reasons to believe there could be a catastrophic recession.

We're always in that place. And so, you have to look at where you would be in those different scenarios and think about if we had a major value, a major increase, a major roaring economy, or if we had a major recession, where would I want to be positioned? And then, by value.

And so, the house that you buy today, you just want to think, "All right, if there were a recession, I'd buy this house for $545,000. Its market value declines to $460,000. Do I have safety? I can hold on to it. And am I convinced of the long-term value of owning this house?

Do the rental markets work, etc.? And if so, go ahead and buy without fear." I know I'm not saying anything new that you don't know, but in terms of just thinking it through logically, if you've looked at your personal life and you don't have anywhere you can spend the money that was going to make a meaningful difference, if you've looked at your personal financial position and there's no place that you can just say, "I'm going to go ahead and reduce debt and be more conservative, and that's going to make a big difference," then go ahead and keep building and buy the best assets that you know of at the best prices, but by value where you're going to be happy to hold on even if you wind up in a declining market.

Awesome. Thank you. Awesome advice, as always. I hope so. It sounds like obvious. It feels obvious to me. There's nothing new or novel about it, but as far as I see it, you always are in that situation where you have to just buy the best assets that you believe in, and if you don't see an asset that you believe in, then wait until you do.

But that's the way I think it through logically. Yeah, I love it. I get nervous about holding, but I think that that has to be a real option. Just step out for a minute. If you're not comfortable where it is, it's okay to step out, because I just always want to be part of it because I don't want to miss out on the opportunity of investing while I'm young so that as I get older, I have it.

I'm like, "Well, I've got to do something with it," but it's true. You can do something in six months. I really wouldn't worry too much about the inflation thing. It's not possible to predict with any meaningful accuracy for an individual man or woman like you and I. It's not possible for us to predict with any meaningful accuracy on a month-by-month basis what's going to happen with inflation.

It's just not possible. We know that in the United States, the Federal Reserve is going to work very hard to maintain what they consider a normal rate of inflation. They're going to work very hard to maintain a 3% inflation rate. That's their target goal. They're trying to balance high employment and moderate inflation.

They want moderate inflation. In the back of your mind, that's kind of the basic level. Now, there can be times when they're not able to keep inflation running at a 3% rate. What do they do? They try to juice things enough to keep it going, but they don't want it to get out of hand.

The Federal Reserve does not want mass inflation. They do not want 8% inflation. I think that there is enough data to indicate that if we got into a scenario where all of a sudden we've got double-digit inflation, they would put the screws so tight to the monetary system that it would cause dramatic change.

I'm not going to bet on there being inflation. I'm going to have plenty of backup plans in case there is. With borrowing trillions of extra dollars per year, I'm going to have backup plans, but I'm not scared of owning real estate as one part of my overall plan. If there is inflation, number one, you will be able to pay off your mortgages with cheaper dollars.

You're in a safe position based upon the amount of mortgages that you have, so there's no need to rush to do it. If you expected more inflation, then you certainly wouldn't rush to pay off a mortgage. The second thing would be you can always adjust. When you have real property, you have a physical asset that's going to be in demand.

If you have a house, somebody's going to want to live in the house at some price. While you might make less money than you think for a time, if there is an inflationary environment, you can always adjust your rents, and you will. You'll adjust your rents significantly. Then if you get into a worst-case scenario, you'll just adjust your rents in some way and start taking Bitcoin for payment instead of US dollars or some other system that we can't foresee right now.

As human beings, we're wired to think of disaster. We're wired to worry about disaster. I do not believe that disaster is a good policy to have. Disaster is not a plan. Disaster is something you think about, and you say, "Let me put in place a plan for it," but you cannot have this mindset that disaster is going to happen.

If you were certain that disaster was going to happen, then think about what you would do, and then ask yourself, "Am I that certain?" There are times that maybe you liquidate all your property, and you turn it all into some other asset, and you flee the country. Certainly, there are times that you do that, but just recognize that this sense of vague disaster that I have, this sense of personal fear, I need to identify it specifically.

What am I worried about happening? Then put in place whatever plans are going to help me to handle it. From what you've indicated about your family's financial situation, I don't see any big risk to you of something as vague as inflation. Okay. So you're not really concerned about all the dollars that they're printing and the percentage that's been printed in the last year, and inflation is a really hard thing to control.

No question. Once inflation starts going, it's hard economically to pull it back. Yeah. Hear me clearly. I'm very concerned about it, but I have put in place in my own finances plans to handle that, and I have talked what I feel like is ad nauseum here on the show about how you handle that.

At this moment, I've done everything that I am capable of doing and everything that I'm willing to do based upon the current risk. And so if I see significant inflation, I'm protected, and I've talked extensively about how to do it. I can talk you through it again here just for you.

So my point is, though, if you're concerned about that, you need to predict a specific scenario. I think that this scenario could happen. And then ask yourself, how would this scenario affect my finances, and what do I need to do to protect myself in that scenario? Then you solve the fear, you put in place your insurance policy, and you move on, not thinking of constant disaster, but you move on and say, I've bought an insurance policy against that.

Now let me press forward. I'm deeply concerned about it. There's no question about it, but I think that reality would cause us to say, this is concerning. We need to have a plan in case it does, but we're in uncharted waters. People have been predicting massive inflation for 50 years, right?

And I'm just very conscious as a public commentator that for 50 years they've been woefully wrong. And so there's something, there's some appropriate balance between I'm concerned about this, and I'm going to keep pressing forward that we need to strike. That's my point. You give me hope. Good. Thank you.

Good, good. So do the practical exercise, right? Ask yourself, let's say that we had 10% inflation, okay? In 2022, right, or whenever you think, 2021, 2022, let's say 2021 continues to become increasingly weak, but let's say that at the end of 2021 you have wide levels of vaccination. You have lots of pent-up demand.

You have lots of hot money, right? People are having thousands and thousands of dollars of money flow into their bank accounts, especially people who are the most prone to spending, which are generally people who don't earn a lot and who aren't very wealthy. So they've had thousands of dollars flow in, and so now demand starts picking up.

They're going out buying new cars, buying new clothes, buying books for their family, buying whatever it is that they need to do to buy for their family. So you have increasing economic activity and you have loose money. All right, let's say that 2022 we wind up with 10% inflation rates in the United States.

So you ask yourself, how would a 10% inflation rate affect my life? You go through your financing, okay? You think about what assets do I have, or sorry, what debts do I have? Are they tied to, are they variable rates? Are they fixed rates? In your case, probably most of your mortgages are fixed rates at low rates, and so that's not going to harm you there on your financing side.

You go through all your assets and you say, what would be affected by this? How is the bank interest on my bank figured out? How would this affect my life insurance policies? How would this affect my investments? And then just try to model it in your head as best you can.

If you see a risk where you're not well protected, then take action to protect against that, and then go back and just wait for the data to come in to actually show you what's going to happen. Over the years, I've been too convinced of certain things happening, and then I've been wrong that I'm no longer willing to bet the farm on one certain prediction.

I want to have my family taken care of, and I want to have plans, and then I just want to watch the data come in and observe what's happening and proceed forward carefully, and that's the tone that I want to strike. Awesome. Love it. Good. Thank you so much.

Congratulations on your guys' awesome deal. That's fantastic. I hope you can repeat it with this next property, whatever it looks like. Wouldn't that be great? It would be awesome. Great. Thanks, Andrew. Have a great day. All right. Move on to Jose in Colorado. Jose, welcome to the show. How can I serve you today, sir?

Yeah, good morning, or I guess good afternoon in your time. Actually, could I add one real quick thing for Amy? Sure. Yeah, go ahead. She's still on the line. Here, let me pop her back on so we can get a group call, because I usually hang up on people, but Andrew's back on the line now, so you can talk directly to her.

Oh, thanks. Go ahead, Jose. Andrew? Yeah. Hi. Yeah. This is Jose. Sorry. One thing that I thought about with your question as well, I'm a real estate investor myself, and as far as the concern about having to reinvest everything, $600,000 in another property for 1031 right now, just one other thing you could think about is, say, well, you could split the difference and then just take part of the income as boot.

So let's say you find another $300,000 property that you think would be another great deal. Then you could still buy that, and then the rest of the proceeds that you did not use for the 1031, you would end up paying taxes on, but it's kind of like a compromise position there.

Okay. Yeah. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. Okay. Yeah. But then I pay taxes on the whole difference, not just the cash that I walk away with. Is that correct? I'm not exactly sure. I'll have to check my account. Yeah. I'm not going to say exactly, but it is a way to kind of, yeah, I guess compromise.

My take home from this call is just kind of take a deep breath, calm down, and you don't have to play if it's better not to, and you can play halfway. So that's good. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that once you reach a certain point of wealth, and that was why I was saying what I was saying, Andrea, about where you guys are as a family, is that once you reach a certain point in your wealth, you would make different decisions.

If somebody just, this was their first big deal, and they had a $200,000 profit, then in that situation, they might be looking at it, and they might be saying, "All right, man, I'm going to take this $200,000, and now I'm ready to reinvest it." Down the road, when you've got several million dollars, there may not be any need to take any further risk, because the bigger your income goals, the bigger the risks are, and the bigger the risks are of being wiped out.

And so it's fine to play the conservative game if that's what you believe is right for your family. All right, Jose, go ahead. You're up. Yeah. So a couple things. One, I am super excited about your upcoming adventure travel plans. One of my questions associated with that is, you mentioned a meetup possibility in Costa Rica, I think you said maybe late May.

And I was wondering if that was something that you'd be willing to share some more info sooner than later, so that those of us who are interested could see if we could make it work to meet you down there. I want to answer sooner rather than later, but I'm still nailing down some dates with the hotel, and so I don't want to put out wrong information.

All I want to say is that as soon as I can possibly give you a date, I will. Okay. Awesome. That is fine. But that whole plan sounded incredible. And then my other question for you is not about personal finance or that at all. It's more just about your process with the podcast.

I'm just kind of curious. I've been listening for years and years, and I'm curious about how you go about preparing and making not these Friday open line days, but the regular editions where you have an idea and you go over it. And I just kind of wanted to – just curious about the general process.

Yeah, I'll tell it to you, and I'll tell it to you frankly and forthrightly without holding anything back. But when you do it, it's often difficult to do it in a way that you think would be helpful to people because my process changes in many different ways. And it's also adapted over the years in many different ways.

It's changed. It's adjusted over the years. And so I would say the first thing is for me, one of the reasons why I chose podcasting as a primary way of getting my message out is because it plays to my strengths. And I believe that a basic success secret is you should play to your personal strengths.

I'm a decent writer, but I tend to be fairly complicated when I write. I struggle to write simply. So in the same way that in a lot of ways I struggle to speak simply. But I like to speak and I've worked hard to be good at speaking. I haven't always been a good speaker.

I've worked hard to build skills as a good speaker. I've spoken a lot. I've given lots of public speeches. I've practiced. I've done the hard work. I've studied the craft enough to be better than most at it. But it also lines up with just my natural personal skill set.

One of the things that has really helped me is as I've studied things like personality types and learning styles, I've learned things about myself that I didn't know when I was younger. For example, I consider myself to be a verbal learner. I am a person who learns best by talking something through.

In addition, I don't do well with lots of time to think. I do very well with extemporaneous speeches. I forget what name to apply to this, but there are some of us who you can basically ask me right now any question. And as long as I know something about it, I can present to you something thoughtful that will be useful on an extemporaneous manner.

That's why I do well with these Friday Q&A shows. I don't like to prepare a lot. I don't like to sit down and spend hours and hours working through things. That's not my personality. I would contrast that. Take a recent guest, someone who's exactly the opposite, Jacob Lundfisker. When I had him on the show recently, I'd reached out to him.

I saw he was taking interviews again, and I said, "Okay, Jacob, would you be willing to come on to Radical Personal Finance again? I've got some things I want to talk to you about." He said, "Yeah." And he said, "I could do it, but I'd rather if you gave me some thoughts and some ideas so that I could prepare." And so I went ahead and I said, "Well, here are the questions that I want to ask you about.

It's not just the same old boring stuff. Here's the stuff that I'm thinking about." And he went back, and he spent a few weeks meditating on those questions, thinking about them, and then I brought him on, and then we went through the prepared questions that I had, focusing on the value.

Jacob Lundfisker is basically the exact opposite of me. If somebody wants to interview me on their show, I don't want two weeks to think about it. I'm not going to think about it. I'm ready to go right now. I don't need to know the questions. Just bring it on.

I'm ready to go. And so that's a personality strength that some of us have that if you figure that out and you say, "Hey, I've got this personality strength. Where can I go that this will be a real asset for me?" Then all of a sudden doing something like a podcast, doing media, makes a lot of sense.

Whereas for Jacob Lundfisker, what would make the most sense for him is writing. Why? Well, because if he's that thoughtful person who meditates on something, who considers things, who's going to take his time, then for him writing is going to be a very core part of that because it allows him to edit and edit and edit and to think, "Was I clear enough?

Do I want to adjust that? Do I really believe what I wrote?" And it's really, really good for that kind of personality. And so for me, podcasting is part of my focusing in on what is my unique ability? What is my – what makes me – what am I better at than the vast majority of people?

What comes easily to me? And so with good training and preparation, speaking comes easily to me. Now, over the years, I've worked hard at the craft. The early years of Radical Personal Finance, I was too verbose. I struggled. I still remember the difficulty of sitting in front of a microphone for the first time with no audience.

It's very difficult. I've expressed that many times. Speaking to an audience as a public speaker is not nearly as difficult for me as podcasting because when you speak to an audience, you can observe their reactions and you can see the eyes go – start to glaze over and you realize, "I got to shake things up, right?

I need to tell a joke. I need to get some movement. I need to change my pacing." Or if you see people looking confused, "I'm going too fast. Let me slow down. Get a couple questions. Let's get back center." And so once you've spoken enough, you start to learn how to interact with an audience.

With a microphone, I don't have that. With a microphone, I have to pretend that I'm the audience and listen and understand how should I vary my pacing. Am I going too long on this thing? Am I taking a rabbit trail here or is this interesting in some way? And so that's taken me a number of years to get better at.

And I've gotten a lot better. I still have room to run. So I say that as a prelude, a preamble, just simply to say that I believe that when I'm talking about what I'm good at and how I do a podcast, there are many listeners who should never do a podcast but who would be brilliant at writing.

Now, there are things that I'm not – there are other ways that I probably could learn but things I'm not good at. And so in terms of other types of expression, so a podcast really works well for my personal area, my personal skill set. So how do I prepare?

I actually think almost all the time about what I'm going to say on a podcast. And so while I don't sit down frequently and sit down and identify, "Okay, I'm going to put out an outline," I'm thinking nonstop about these topics. I read. I listen. I study. I observe.

And I think nonstop about the financial topics. And generally in my head, I'm usually arguing with people. And so I hear somebody say something and I'm thinking – I'll give you two examples from yesterday and today. These are current examples. Yesterday I was watching somebody – I watched a YouTube video of a guy who was talking about why motivational speakers are scam artists and are a waste of money.

And he was talking about how the success industry is a complete waste of money. And Tony Robbins and Darren Hardy and these guys are just – they're doing things when if people just stopped consuming success literature and they went and consumed – and just started reading a book on how to take – or on specific actions they could take in their life, how they could do so much better.

And I listened to his story. I listened to his video. And for the last 15 hours, I've been arguing with him in my head, systematically categorizing the ideas that I think he's right about, the dangers. I'm comparing it to my own experience. And I've been thinking about, but here's what he missed.

Here's what he should have said. Here's where he didn't identify his audience well enough. And here's what Darren Hardy would say or here's what Tony Robbins would say. Here's how they would respond. And so my head thinks nonstop in terms of an argument. And so I could right now give you a 30-minute discussion of how you can use motivational speakers to improve your wealth because I've been thinking about it for the last 15 hours.

Just in the hour before I started recording this Q&A show, I was working. I was cleaning some things up in my house. And I put on a YouTube video from Coffeezilla. Coffeezilla is a guy on YouTube who is very much like the anti-get-rich-guru guy. He's the guy who talks about how all the get-rich guys, the Dan Locks and the Tai Lopez and I can't remember this Australian guy that he was trying to pillory, how, you know, these guys are all scam artists and whatnot.

And so I was listening to his presentation, thinking about it. And I've been arguing with him for the last hour, thinking about what he said that I think was right and what he said that I think was wrong. And so my preparation is that I'm constantly thinking about the questions and the arguments.

Yesterday, I'm watching Dave Ramsey's Instagram stories. And Dave is answering questions about whole life insurance. And he gives this thing about why he hates whole life insurance. And so I'm immediately arguing with Dave in my head. And I'm saying, "Well, Dave, you're right about this, this, this. And I think that you're probably giving good advice on this, this, this.

But here's why you're wrong." And so my brain, what's in my head is basically a nonstop perpetual argument with everybody on everything. It's rather difficult sometimes because I don't express that stuff except in a podcast. I don't argue with people in person. I have basically a personal philosophy of unconditional positive regard.

I very rarely will ever say to a person in real life, you know, I very rarely argue with anybody in real life. I don't think you gain much. But I think a lot and I test ideas. And so that's the preparation that brings me to the point where when I come to a show, it's something I've been thinking about sometimes for months, years, days, hours, et cetera.

So then when you put these skills together for me personally, there's not a lot that I haven't -- if I come across an idea, I think about it. I research all of the details about it. When I started Radical Personal Finance, I chose what I do intentionally because I thought it played to my strengths.

I literally told my wife, I said, "I want to have a business where if I spend a day or a couple of days getting sucked down some rabbit trail on the internet, I want to have a business where that's not a bad thing." Because I've done that my whole life.

My whole life I've found a topic that I'm interested in and then I just chase it all the way down. And I read this, I learn that, I study this until I feel like I can master the topics and the way that it's presented. And yet for much of my work life, that was not a benefit.

That always harmed me when I sold insurance. Why did it harm me? Because insurance sales is not a thinking man's job. Insurance sales is a doing man's job. And so I'm always thinking about this and thinking about that and yet people who would just simply come to work and say the same thing over and over again, they would be far more successful at selling insurance than me.

Because they just did the work and they didn't think. They just said, "Here's what we do," and they did it. And so when I was able to go from a place where my personal skills, my personal inclinations stopped being a liability and became an asset, then it opened up a whole new system for me, a whole new opportunity.

And so what you see when I record a Friday Q&A show or when I record any podcast, what you see is how with introspection I've carefully considered where my skills and my interests are and then I've tried to align that very carefully with the career path that I've chosen.

And that's what you see. It's not accidental. It's very carefully planned. But it's a matter of me doing the hard work to understand myself, understand my skills, and then put them into practice. And so when Andrea asks me a question about inflation, it's not like I haven't thought about inflation.

For the last 20 years I've been reading books about inflation. For the last 20 years I've been reading every Black Pilled Doomsday, we're all going to die book and author and saying, "Take all your money and buy gold and take all your money and go buy farmland in Brazil." I've read everything.

I've listened to all the arguments. And so now it gives me the ability that I'm fairly immune to the arguments because I've thought, "All right, here's where those arguments are right," but it's not new for me. It's a reflection of 20 years of personal interest and work. So we're now getting to the range of a little bit verbose.

But the point is that it's that homework. It's that background that allows me to create podcasts fairly easily. So when I sit down to do a podcast, at this point in time I basically sit down and I hit record and I speak. So yesterday's podcast on tax planning, I sat down.

I knew an article that I had read years ago by David Gross that I thought was – okay, I know this article is out there. It's been a good one. I've read it eight years ago. It's just the thing that's in my head. So I went online. It took me a minute to find his website.

I searched Sniggle. I couldn't find it without it. I searched 99 Tactics. I found that. I found the article I knew was there. And then I pulled open some tax software and I knew the numbers because I've done it a lot of times. And I ran the tax software and I turned the microphone on.

I hit record. I spoke for whatever it was. And then I hit stop. And that's it. There's no more preparation than that. But that comes just to emphasize there have been a few things that I've known for a lot of time. Number one, I'm speaking in areas of personal interest where I've studied my craft, I know the questions, I know the thoughts.

And so because I know what my audience is likely to be thinking about and the points that they're actually going to make. So I'll give you a couple of live examples from yesterday's show. All right. What are the objections to someone saving money on taxes? Well, the two big ones are there's no 100% tax rate.

So saving money on taxes is not a worthy financial goal. And the second one is how should someone prioritize saving taxes amidst other things, amidst other goals? And so I know that those are the issues. I know that's what's going to be focused on. I always imagine, OK, what would Ramit Sethi say, right?

Ramit would say, "Well, Joshua, you're being an idiot by focusing on zero taxes." Well, I think Ramit's wrong. I think he's right and he's wrong. And so I'm thinking how am I going to defend these concepts to Ramit and to Ramit's listeners and readers and audience and trying to articulate it in a way where someone could see, oh, if you approach this with this certain perspective, these certain goals, then it makes sense.

And so when I sit down, it's not difficult for me to do it, but it's not difficult because of 20 years of reading about the stuff, 20 years of thinking, 20 years of arguing with everybody that I read, everyone that I listen to, reading all of the comments, reading the arguments, thinking about how the person could have done a better job articulating it.

Then it's a matter of a huge amount of practice of doing it. Thirdly, it's a matter of I've known since the day I started Radical Personal Finance that I have no interest in going back and becoming a professional audio editor, and I've always known that there's no one that I can hire that can do a good job of editing the audio.

And so I've always known that I need to be able to edit myself with my pacing of delivery, the topics that I choose, all of that. And so now after six or seven years and 700 episodes, I've gotten better at that. And so when you put those things together, that's the formula for me to create a podcast.

I do from time to time, I'll often sit down and create a few basic notes, but many times I don't. I'll just simply hit record, and my brain thinks in a fairly logical way. I think in terms of threes and, okay, here are three points and five points. And so once I have the ideas in my head, they're pretty much captured there forever.

So that's my answer to your question, Jose. I don't know how useful that is to someone else who wants to do it, but that's what I have done. I've done it intentionally, and to the degree that a listener thinks it works, now you understand why it works and how it works.

>> Jose: Yeah, that's cool. And no, I'm definitely not interested in doing a podcast. I'm just more interested in just hearing how it works. So that was really awesome. Yeah. >> Steve: My pleasure. To me, one of the, I guess, the simplest things that any person can do is try to learn to know themselves.

And that takes work. It takes a lot of hard work of introspection, and it takes some exposure to the ideas. But if you can learn to know yourself, I don't know whether to say it in this Aristotelian sense or what, but just to understand and have some idea of what you're good at, what you're not good at, what you're interested in, what you're not interested in, the things that are unique to you, the things that come easily to you, then you should take, you look at your life, and you should arrange the things in your life.

To play to your areas of genius and not to your areas of weakness. I have observed so many times that there are people who are absolute geniuses in certain areas. And if they could simply move from a place where they're weak and move into a place where that area of genius is profiled and is appreciated and is celebrated, that in and of itself can make all the difference in the world.

And so while I can't articulate all of the ways of doing it, I can say that if you can do the hard work to know what you're good at, to know who you are as a person, what makes you tick, then approach your life and consciously say, "Are the things that I'm pursuing lining up with this?

Is this an area where I can succeed? Is this an area where I'm going to be the kind of person who is going to do well or not?" And then everything is a lot easier. Anything else, Jose? Yeah, I agree with that. No, you got it. Thank you. All right, my pleasure.

And that brings us to the end of our callers. Let me just think for a moment if there's anything I need to say to you before we go. I believe I've said it for now. I will let you know as soon as I can about any details of the Costa Rica event.

I'm still working with a hotel to decide which weekend to do it. And so as soon as I have that done, I will let you know. And I'm looking forward to the coming months. Thank you so much for being here. Happy Friday to you. Have a great day. (upbeat music)