♪ California's top casino and entertainment destination is now your California to Vegas connection. Play at Yamaha Resort and Casino at San Manuel to earn points, rewards, and complimentary experiences for the iconic Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas. ♪ Two destinations, one loyalty card. Visit yamaha.com/palms to discover more. - Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a 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 freedom in 10 years or less.

My name is Josh Rasheeds. Today on the show, I want to share with you a simple and yet I believe under-discussed truth. This is a truth that I myself have resisted quite vigorously. This is a truth that I have never wanted to acknowledge as true. This is a truth that I wish were not true.

And yet at this point in my life, I have to concede that I believe this is true. I believe that this is an enduring truth that has really probably never really changed. And at this point in time, I don't think it has much chance of changing. Here is the truth.

If you desire to live a lifestyle of freedom, to have the highest levels of personal freedom, the highest levels of personal choice, to be able to do the things that you wish to do, to live in the way that you believe is right, if that is your desire, then you have virtually no option other than to dedicate yourself to becoming rich, to dedicate yourself to becoming financially wealthy.

Now, hear me clearly, I do not like that that is true. I long for a world in which that's not true. I wish for systems of community and culture and government to be dedicated to justice, equal justice for all so that all are equal before the law. I wish for systems that acknowledge individual sovereignty and individual rights.

I wish for a society that supports that. I have, like many people, engaged in the pursuit of those societies and arguments about how, yes, they really do exist or they really should exist or here's how we can make them to exist. What I haven't observed is, while I am not without hope that perhaps one day a society like that might exist, in fact, I genuinely believe that one day in the fullness of time it will exist, however, at this point in time, it does not seem to exist.

But along the way, when you analyze most of the choices that you want to make, what you will see is that if you are wealthy, you have vastly higher levels of personal freedom of choice. I wanna give some examples to drive this home to you and indicate to you that, while I'm intentionally using words like wealthy, that this is a sliding scale of freedom.

If you're a little bit more wealthy than you were previously, you have a few more choices. If you are infinitely more wealthy than you were previously, you have abundantly more choices. But I believe that it's important that you acknowledge that building financial wealth is an integral part of your pursuing personal freedom.

It's not optional. There are good arguments to be made in the opposite. For example, I myself have done shows. I did a show one time talking about the famous philosophical saying where there's the king's servant, two of the king's philosopher's servants are talking to each other. And one of the servants sees the other servant eating a simple bowl of lentils for his meal.

And he says, "Listen, if you would just learn "to please the king, "then you wouldn't have to live on lentils." To which the second philosopher's servant responds, "If you would learn to live on lentils, "you wouldn't have to please the king." There's a whole show on that. I believe that's true, right?

The man who has the simplest of desires in some cases can be freer than the man in many cases is simply freer because he has simpler desires and thus he's able to take more risks. I think a lot of times we like to wax poetic about the lifestyle of those who don't have anything.

I often do find myself admiring those people. I enjoy admiring people who can do well on little. But when you actually get down to it, you don't have more freedom just because you have little. You do have more freedom when your desires are less, but you have more freedom when you have resources.

You have more freedom when you have options. Give an example. Okay. I am currently at the moment in the nation of France. I've been here for a few weeks. And I wanted to come to France because my plan had been for a significant amount of time to spend the summer in France, working on my own French skills and abilities and helping my children, collecting books and literature in French for them, and just having an opportunity to spend some time in France.

It's such a beautiful place, lovely country, tremendous history, very appealing culture. There's just so many things that I like about France. So we came here. And of course, traveling anywhere is difficult right now. And that travel is often frustrating, but I've dealt with it. I've chosen places that were freer.

And I knew coming to Europe that I was going into a place that was perhaps less free. But after studying the different laws and things, I decided, you know what? There's gonna be enough freedom. And there really was. There really was. We spent time on the island nation of Malta, spent time in Spain, spent time in Portugal, Andorra, significant levels of freedom.

The coronavirus restrictions were not much of a problem. Obviously, we had to have the appropriate tests and paperwork to get in, but generally it wasn't a problem. Until that is, we got to France. And my wife did not want to come to France because she wants nothing to do with the, here, the pass sanitaire, the health pass and the COVID pass, and I want nothing to do with it.

But I'm, honestly, I'm more easily, I'm more willing to put up with some of the stuff that she is, but I convinced her, I was like, well, let's do it, it'll be fine. It's not gonna be so bad. Let me tell you, it's bad. It is absolutely horrendous here.

Just like in many places, it is awful. In order for you to go almost anywhere, you have to have an app on your phone with a QR code that is scanned at the entrance to everything. And I, again, I knew that coming in, but I thought, you know what, come on, the French, right?

They've got this proud history of standing up for liberté, fraternité, égalité, right? This is their national motto is liberté. The French are known as people who loved, like, come on, they're not really gonna go into this. And I'm not gonna go to Paris. I'm not gonna go to a metropolitan area.

I'm gonna stay out in the country, go to a little village. It's not gonna be so bad, right? Yeah, it's bad. I refuse to participate in any kind of government app on my personal tracking device. It's just, that's horrific. If you know the slightest thing about data security and whatnot, that's a horrific thing.

So I refuse to participate on a matter of principle. And what that means is I can't go anywhere. I can't do anything. I can't go to the mall. You got people at the borders of all the malls. I can't go to the stores. Many of the stores, even ordinary stores are closed off.

Thankfully, not a grocery store. Thankfully, not a grocery store. I can still go to a grocery store and buy food. I can still go to an open-air market and get some food there. I can't go to any restaurants. Get turned away again after again after again. I can't even, in many cases, even buy a coffee because of not having the pass, not having the QR code.

And it's brutal. It's brutal. And I thought, oh, maybe the French were gonna protest more. There was these pictures online you could see a few weeks ago of, oh, look, all the French are bringing their meals and they're picnicking on the street in front of the restaurants to protest the health pass.

Well, I can't see any evidence where I am of those actual protests. And so it's pretty awful, right? So I'm done, I'm leaving. But the point is that I have the choice to leave. Why? Well, because I'm not poor. I have the ability to just get up and go and to leave.

And I don't take that for granted. That's something that has required a significant amount of work to build. But when you see it, you recognize, man, I really wish that something I could say or something I could do could improve things 'cause my heart goes out to people who can't just get up and leave, who have to live with this kind of stuff on a daily basis.

It's all around the world, right? There's people who are locked in their houses and they're not allowed to come out of their house. They're not allowed to come out of their house. There are right now in the West, there are government agents who will not allow you to buy more than two packs of beer because they think you're drinking too much.

They won't allow you to leave your house to go get it. You have to have it ordered in. And there's government agents restricting the flow of alcohol to your private neighborhood. It's insane. And to me, it's been somewhat shocking because a year and a half ago, I was sitting watching the news, following it very closely, a lot of the news from China.

And I was watching a lot of the, some of the local language stuff that I could find as well. And I'm seeing all these pictures of the Chinese citizens lining up. And in order to ride on the public transportation, they had to pull out their app and they had to show their green check mark with the Bluetooth geolocation showing, look, yes, we're good, we don't have COVID.

We can pass onto the train, et cetera. And I'm laughing, I'm like, that's awful. But man, I'm glad that I'm not living in China. And yet, here I am seeing that and worse in so many parts of places that I thought had more defenses against it. It's stunning. And of course, American President Joe Biden last night comes out with a new policy indicating that not only do you have various medical mandates for government entities, and not only have many large companies chosen that, but now the federal government is going to impose medical mandates for certain forms of medical treatment or testing for all companies larger than 100.

And I keep thinking to myself, oh, come on, the Americans, they're more rebellious. They're not gonna go along with that. This point, I don't know, I don't know. I've always felt that probably the Americans are more rebellious and not actually gonna go along with that, but watching what they have gone along with is pretty stunning to me.

So what's the point? The point is that when you tackle these problems, what you find is that if you are rich, the solutions are relatively easy. If you don't wanna be ruled by someone else, you just leave. And the rich always have a way out. I can leave France.

It's not hard for me. Go to the airport, get on an airplane and go. And the world is full of countries that are far freer. And I can just pick one of those countries. I can show up, grab a house, be totally at ease. Everything is good. That's 'cause I'm not broke.

I think about the man or the woman who has a job and their employers can come along and say, we're going to mandate that you do something. The person doesn't wanna do it. What choice do you make? You need a job to feed your family, you roll over. I appreciate that a lot of people think they wouldn't.

I'd like to think that I wouldn't, but at the end of the day, you gotta feed your family. You gotta feed yourself. And so if you're not rich, that's a really hard decision to make. But if you do have a little bit of money, you gotta have some savings, you got some backup plans, that decision is a lot easier.

So the point is that money solves virtually all of these problems. School's not how you want it to be for your children. Money means you pull them out, you hire a private tutor. Money means that you take them somewhere else. A city or a country is not providing you with an appropriate level of freedom.

Money means that you just get up and go. Imagine this, imagine your country tells you where you can and cannot go. Imagine your country says, you can't fly into a certain country, you can't visit a certain country 'cause we don't like them. Imagine that your country says, you can't leave our country.

Even though you're a citizen, theoretically, we say we're a free country, you can't leave our country. It's happening right now, without a good enough excuse that we approve. Well, what does a rich man do? He just invents the excuse and goes. Poor man though, doesn't have the pool to make the excuse.

And here's what's so nasty about this truth. You feel dirty talking about it, you feel dirty acknowledging it. There's no question that rich people have tremendous amounts of personal privilege, privilege that many people don't have. There's no question about that. And you feel dirty because you want desperately for that not to be true.

But it is true. And on every single issue, it's true. Maybe it's not travel freedom, maybe it's banking freedom. Well, rich people have options all around the world. They can afford to come and go and go where they wanna do and spend their money how they want to. Maybe it's getting access to certain things.

Rich people can always get access to certain things. No matter what it is. Maybe you're saying, oh, I should have the freedom to protect myself and my family. Yeah, well, if you're rich, you do, right? Because the politicians always have the goons with the guns around them no matter what, no matter what laws they do.

But if you're not rich, well, tough luck. Sucks to be you. So if you genuinely desire to be free, you genuinely care about freedom, you have to prioritize wealth building as part of that freedom plan. Now, there are tiers to this. It's not, you don't have to become worth $100 million before you can live freely.

There are tiers to it. Go back and listen to my seven rings of freedom series. Many of those rings of freedom are extremely practical. Only one of them is total financial freedom. But there is no question that financial freedom leads to everything else. And in today's world, you can buy it.

You can buy the freedom that you want. Your country won't let you travel. They won't let you go a certain place. Go ahead and buy yourself a citizenship in another country that actually cares about freedom. Gives you a passport and says, here you go. We'll leave you alone. It's just a simple value for value transaction.

You give them money, they give you travel documents. Boom, you're done. You care about your freedom and you don't wanna submit to a certain thing, a certain medical mandate. Okay, just go somewhere else where you don't have that. Or simply pay somebody to give you the right paperwork. Pay somebody to put your name in the system.

Pay somebody else to hold the QR code for you. All of these things can be bought. Don't like the laws restricting you from certain something that you want? Just go somewhere else. That's the point. I despise the fact that this is true. I have spent a lot of my life wishing and battling with myself, ideologically, with others, trying to say that this is not true.

Shouldn't be true. Shouldn't be true. And I'm still willing to stand up and encourage and support others. But at the end of the day, if you want one of the fastest and most direct paths to personal freedom, it's often going to be found in financial freedom and wealth building.

And I say that because I hope that if you'll think about it, you'll consider whether this is actually true, may help you to possibly save some time in your life. One of the things that, I've been doing this series of shows on my biggest financial mistakes. One of the biggest financial mistakes that I ever made was getting involved in ideological and political battles.

I used to think, oh, this is not right. It shouldn't be this way. The world should be different. And I'm gonna get involved. I'm gonna vote. I'm gonna campaign. I'm gonna spend time writing long Facebook posts and advocating for my political solution. All of that stuff is just a total waste of time.

Total waste of time. Unless you can figure out how to make a living on it, and you can figure out and say, hey, this is what I really wanna do, and I wanna become some kind of political pundit. Okay, fine. But for the average person, it's just a total waste of time.

And if somebody had been able to persuade me, hey, Joshua, listen, you want freedom. You're never gonna find it in this way. You're not gonna find it by advocating for libertarianism or whatever you think it is. You're not gonna find it in that way. And I think it's useful to have a personal philosophy that makes sense.

But if somebody just said, Joshua, if you want freedom, get rich. If I believed them, probably would've enjoyed a lot more freedom a lot earlier. And I see a lot of people who are making the same choice that I made, say, no, we're gonna fight for this. There's no point.

There's no point. If you wanna be free, if you wanna be able to go where you wanna go, live how you wanna live, walk your way up the steps of wealth, you don't have to be a multimillionaire. First thing is save some money. All right, go through my Rings of Freedom series again.

Start by saving some money. Build your own business. Withdraw your children from government schools. Get your family able to move around as one rather than being pulled in multiple competing directions. Build some assets. Build some multi-country, multi-continental options and solutions. Build some redundancy in your life. And get rich.

If you do that, you'll have far more personal freedom. And then what I see about this is there's no reason in today's world why anybody can't do that. There's no reason. You're not stuck where you are. You don't have to take it. You can change it. But you gotta be practical and realistic.

Don't spend your time wasting your time arguing for politics or getting involved in advocacy for something or fighting it out in the courts. Let people who are rich do that. You just go and get rich and then enjoy your personal freedom and then teach other people how to get rich.

They'll enjoy their personal freedom. I understand how revolting this can sound. Really do. It sucks. But sometimes in life you have to face the ugly truth and then acknowledge it and say, hey, if this is true, I'm just gonna move forward. Doesn't matter whether you think something should be true or not.

If something is true, there's no good to fight against it. So ask yourself, is it true? Will you enjoy high levels of personal freedom, higher levels of personal freedom if you are richer? And then is there a more efficient path to your achieving those higher levels of personal freedom than by becoming richer?

I think in at least 80% of the cases, the answer is the fastest path to personal freedom is found in higher levels of personal productivity, becoming a more useful and valuable contributor to society, a better worker, a more skilled worker which leads in the fullness of time to higher levels of wage and income, high levels of wage and income lead to more personal financial stability.

Take some of that money, set it aside, you become more and more invulnerable to the daily vicissitudes of life. As those numbers keep growing, your options get bigger. Maybe there is a point in time at which you have enough money that you don't need anymore in terms of freedom.

I think it probably does exist. I don't know what that number is. What I do know is that when I look at my personal freedom, I enjoy massive levels of personal freedom, but the levels of personal freedom that I don't yet enjoy are due to my not yet having enough money.

And the fastest and most direct path to that freedom is not to fight for it, but to make more money. Hats off to people who are gonna fight for it, hats off to those who are gonna argue and debate, et cetera. But I think that if you want fast results, you care about your personal freedom, freedom of yourself, freedom of your family, freedom of conscience, getting richer should be at the top of the list for how to achieve that.

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