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Visit yamava.com/palms to discover more. Today is Friday and as always, live Q&A. (upbeat music) Good Friday to you, my friends. Today is Friday, December 3, 2021, coming up on the end of 2021. My name is Joshua Sheets, this is Radical Personal Finance, a show where I work with you to help you live a rich and meaningful life now while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.

Today is Friday and as we do any Friday where I can make all the wires and the internet and the phone signal work, it's live Q&A. (upbeat music) As I said, any Friday that I can make everything work and arrange everything with a reasonably quiet place to record and a microphone that works and a little bit of access to an internet signal and a phone signal, we do a live Friday call-in show.

Works just like live call-in talk radio. You hear it probably about an hour after it's recorded. Usually I have these published within about 10 minutes of finishing up the recording, but basically you get to call in and talk about anything you wanna talk about, as the late Rush Limbaugh used to say, open line Friday.

And I love to talk with you about any questions you have, anything related to your personal life, anything you wanna pick my brain on, anything you wanna rant and rave about. We love talking about those topics. If you would like to join me on a Friday Q&A show, I would love for you to do that.

Go to Patreon, sign up to support the show on Patreon and that will give you access to one of these Friday Q&A shows. That allows me to squeeze the number of callers down to a manageable level by restricting access through Patreon. So if you'd like to speak to me, probably one of your cheapest and most effective ways to get a chance to call in and talk with me about anything that you are interested in talking with me about.

We begin today with Peter. Peter, welcome to the show. How can I serve you today, sir? - Hey, Joshua, how are you? - Very well, sir. - All right, my parents are clearing out their house. They brought my baseball card collection over at Thanksgiving and I am wondering what to do with them now.

- You have picked something that I know nothing about, literally nothing about. - I was afraid of that. - Literally never in my life have I ever bought a sports card or ever even been interested in even looking at one. I'm interested in most things, but that's one of those things that I have never in my life had even the least bit of interest in.

So I don't know. - I've stumped you, I can't believe it. - There you go. It's gotta happen sometime to all of us, right? But I'll tell you what, I'll be reading about baseball cards this week, so you won't get me next week. No. Have you looked for any experts?

Have you reached out to anybody or anything like that yet? - I've kind of tried. I think one of the issues is that a lot of these places you kind of put a web email request in, it's unclear how much they're checking it. And I've done a little searching.

The real crux of the issue is my sense is a lot of the cards from the era these are from, which is basically the late '80s, most of them are basically valueless, but there are some that have some value. And I think what I'm trying to figure out is, is it easier to just find someone to tell me what to do with everything and probably get lowballed?

Do I find the good ones in there and try to peddle those? Or do I put them all in the trash? Or is there something in between? The thing is that there are literally thousands of these. So like doing the accounting of this would be quite a massive undertaking.

So that's the challenge. I've probably got between, I've probably got 5,000 of them. - Do you have a nephew, well 5,000 of them, I mean there's gotta be something that's worth some money in there. Do you have a nephew or a niece that might be interested for a cut of the profits of going through and looking for them on Amazon and trying to figure out, sorry not Amazon, eBay, and doing a little bit of research on them, trying to figure out if there's any big winners in there?

- I feel like the neighbor's kid would actually be best. My nephews unfortunately live pretty far away. But my neighbor's child might be interested. - I would start with that. I used to do some of this when I was in college. I didn't understand why people would have a guy like me do it.

But there were some wealthy people who would be like, here I have this project and I'll give you, sell this thing for me. I sold a guy, I sold an old Mercedes car for a guy on Palm Beach one time. I had a friend who was getting rid of a bunch of really expensive designer clothing.

And she said, here, sell this stuff and take a cut of the profits. And I realized that's a good way to do it. And if you've got, if your neighbor's boy, if there's a boy there who can use eBay and can go through it, he would probably enjoy it.

And it'd be an interesting and fairly quick project for him to learn how they're classified, learn how they're called, and look through them. And just do a kind of a quick work through and make a little spreadsheet and see what they're worth. And if you figured out something, I don't know whether you want to decide it in advance or figure out what's equal, what's fair, I don't know, but 20% or 30% or 50%, that basically you'll give them a commission for going through and figuring out what they're worth and then selling them.

So to me, that would be kind of a good place to start. There probably are services, probably are experts who could just go through it quickly, but the neighbor's kid is probably going to be cheaper in terms of, and it's a great chance for him to make a little bit of money around his other obligations.

So that's where I'd start. - Genius, I'll give it a try. I hope that helps. And like I said, maybe this week I'll be working on my baseball card knowledge. It's always interesting, things like baseball card collecting, stamp collecting, like there's still a little market of aficionados, they're still popular, but they have changed a lot.

And what I don't understand is why they're super popular. I know that, I remember when the, I forget his name, the guy who did the boxing, the YouTube guy, who's Jake Paul, who did the boxing, he came out and he's wearing this million dollar Pokemon card around his neck.

And so clearly there's a market for anything. And still you see those old sports cards modernized, I know sports cards are still used, but you see them modernized with even things like Pokemon cards having hundreds of thousands or a million dollars of value. It's remarkable to see. All right, we go on to John.

John, welcome, how can I serve you today, sir? - Hey Joshua, thanks for taking my call. Can you hear me okay? - I hear you well, yes sir, go ahead. - Okay, I've been enjoying your latest podcast about reading to the children more. I always appreciate those reminders to continue on reading to my children even after they are already reading themselves, I've gotten a little bit lazy on that.

But I wanted to talk today about some other media, specifically about, well, with my kids, they're about six and eight and we limit the time they get on say video games. I think we typically give them up to an hour between the two of them, they share a half hour each, I guess, of video games.

And then we're not like a TV on all the time, like family, some days it never goes on at all. But they do get generally another half hour of some kind of screen time. And generally it's watching some YouTube video about the video games they're playing anyway. So add that up, it's about an hour and a half.

It doesn't feel excessive, but some days it just feels like too much. And my older son especially has recently expressed interest in creating a YouTube channel, probably again about video games, just emulating the things he's seen. And I'm much more open to having him create rather than just consume.

But my question really is in how to do that safely with kids and privately more than anything. My role has always been no real names, no faces on any social media. Not that they use any, but even for myself. But as they kind of get older-- - Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on.

Are you saying that your name is not John? Are you, all this time-- (laughing) All this time you have led us to believe that your negal name is not John. John, this is shocking. (laughing) Go ahead. - Sorry for the farce, yeah. (laughing) Yeah. And that's the thing. In some ways it served me well, but I could see definitely arguments for, especially for kids growing up in the modern age, definitely wanting to have a social presence and being more out there.

I think resumes of the future, even now, are more like show me what you did rather than tell me what you did. And I think you even discussed this before, having media platforms that are kind of cataloged. So I know there's ways to privately do YouTube channels and probably do, say, an Instagram if my younger son wanted to take pictures, but maybe I could get some kind of old phone to get it for him.

But I'm just curious about your thoughts about kind of nurturing that. I'd like to nurture the creative side, rather than just the consumption side, but doing it in a safe way that's kind of age appropriate. - That's a big question, as I would expect from you. - Sure. - Because there's so many different directions you can go down.

So many different directions. I want to begin, before we get to the privacy thing, I want to begin by kind of the number one thing that we as parents are always looking at with any of these decisions. The question is opportunity cost. If you're going to bring in something new, what are you going to be getting rid of in order to bring in that new thing?

That's your opportunity cost. And you need to know what is that opportunity cost versus that, what is it? What is it that you're bringing in? And what are you getting rid of? And so I agree with you. I think, for example, if you're saying we're going to take an hour of video games and let's just assume that, okay, maybe they have some value, but it's not super valuable.

And we're going to replace that hour of consumption with an hour of production. That's a better use of the time. But you have to ask, what am I giving up? And what are the benefits of what I'm giving up versus what I'm getting? The thing that has often made me cautious, as we all are, is that oftentimes I can say, I can see so many things that are really big in terms of big, valuable things that you're giving up in favor of something else.

This is my fear and my concern about computer usage, even if it's for very productive stuff, but computer usage, games, et cetera, is that oftentimes I look at it and I say, there's going to be plenty of time to learn that, whereas there's not always going to be plenty of time to do this.

And so you have a six-year-old and an eight-year-old. I have a six-year-old and an eight-year-old. And I'm always torn, right? Should I encourage you to go outside and play? Should I get a computer and teach you how to do, teach you how to do something on it? Should I teach you how to use it?

And there's no manual, right? So you're just as a parent trying to judge that. My comment is just simply note what you're giving up to add something new in before you do it so that you're very clear on it and that you can make the best decision that you know how to make with it.

And then choose something that does have redeeming value. And so I do think that the production experience, right? I haven't actually done it. I've just been planning for the last few months, been planning to get my eight-year-old a GoPro. I have other cameras and I have other cameras, but I think that a GoPro is the best solution.

I've been planning to use it as a chance to say, "Learn film, learn video, learn pictures, "and let's start doing it "and start creating something with it." Because I look at the skill of video creation and storytelling and et cetera as a really, really valuable skill that a child will learn that can be fun and is super useful in the context that we're living in now and going forward.

But I always, again, question, like, "Well, what am I gonna give up? "Am I gonna give up free play outside?" We do quite a bit of academics. I don't wanna give up free play outside. I don't wanna give up running around in the woods. I don't wanna give up building things physically.

There's gonna be always time to sit in front of a computer. I'm hesitant to give those things up. But when you look at it, next question is, "Well, what's the best way to do it?" And so, which is obviously where you're coming into privacy. And so, we live in a world where, especially the YouTube world, where our children see that some people can make their living making YouTube videos.

And some people can make a lot of money making YouTube videos. I have not talked to, granted my sample size is small. Let me rephrase it then. I find very frequently when I talk to teenagers that a very, very common aspiration is, "I want to make videos. "And I want to make videos and figure out "how to make a living on those videos." And what's more, often it's about, "I wanna make a living making video game videos." Because those who play games often get involved in the gaming community and then they watch other people playing games.

I don't like to sound like an old fogey. I don't get it. But I understand that people are into all kinds of things that I don't get. I know that they do it, but it's like for many young people, it's the dream. It's the thing that they wanna do.

I look at it though and I say, "This is probably the single most improbable "area to succeed in." And so back to kind of an argument I presented many times on Radical Personal Finance. Let's say that you are an intelligent, you're an intelligent man and you wanna say, "I wanna go as far as I can in my career." Well, what do smart people do?

Smart people go into law or medicine or into business consulting or something like that or hedge fund finance on Wall Street or something like that. Smart motivated people go into those fields. Well, because of that, your competition is extremely high and because that competition is extremely high, you have to then go above and beyond to distance yourself.

Meanwhile, there are tons and tons of highly profitable areas of business that you could go into and if you went into those, the competition is much, much lower. You could pretty much walk into just about any blue collar trade and take over a company and run it in a business-like way, turn it into a massive company and make millions and millions of dollars.

I've talked to so many people who go into the simplest of businesses like landscaping businesses, but they go in instead of starting as one guy with a lawnmower, they go in with an intention of saying, "I'm gonna build a business," and they build these very big businesses very quickly because much of their competition is a guy with a lawnmower who doesn't have a business mind.

And it's just simpler because you have a lower competition. Now, let's modernize that. I don't know of a young person who is into video games and into YouTube channels on video games who doesn't want to make a living watching YouTube games. And so I kind of feel like that for this generation, the version of being a doctor or a lawyer is gonna be creating YouTube channels on video games.

It's such a saturated market and there's always gonna be some people who break through, but it's gonna be a very improbable area to have success in. Meanwhile, if you can steer someone like that to an area where the probabilities of success can be higher and you can harvest the things that they want to do, the things that they want to learn more effectively, then it would be really, really powerful.

So let me give a simple example. If you were to, "I am convinced. "I can't prove this. "You judge for yourself." But if you were to take two business plans and let's say you had a 12-year-old, I understand this beyond the stage where you're at, John, but let's say you have a 12-year-old and you're coaching a 12-year-old and a 12-year-old wants to build a business creating YouTube video gaming content around his favorite video games, the chances of success for that 12-year-old are extraordinarily low in terms of monetary success.

But if you take that same 12-year-old and you show that 12-year-old how to go to a local business and create a simple three-minute sizzle reel for the local business that that business can use and put as a featured video on their Facebook page, as a featured video at the top of their very simple business website so that when their customers come across that business, they can just check out that quick sizzle reel and has a few shots of the outside of the business, a little interview with the owner, looking nicely off camera with good camera work with the owner saying, "My dad who started this business back in blah, blah, blah," and a quick little interesting story, a couple of testimonials from some customers, et cetera, and then that gets cut together into a three-minute sizzle reel, that 12-year-old can charge thousands of dollars for that video and have people do it all day long and can just simply go around your town from business to business, create a portfolio, do a couple of free ones and say, "I can create this video for you," and what's more is not only will I create it, but I'll go ahead and I'll put it on all your pages and it will dramatically improve the performance of your public profile.

That 12-year-old is going to have tremendous business opportunities, and so I would coach the 12-year-old in that direction rather than in the direction of start a video game channel because the probabilities of success and where the competition is is much, much lower. The challenge is, is the 12-year-old interested in that, right?

Because it's really fun to create video game content up for YouTube. It might be less fun to create the sizzle reels for the local businesses. On the other hand, it's profitable to create the local sizzle reels and you can actually afford to then buy the video games instead of sitting around making $0 on your YouTube channel because no one wants to watch your content.

Given that in mind, I ask myself, let's say you go back to six and eight. Is there some way that you can find a way to say, "Let's build skills, but let's do it in a way that's going to lead you in a direction of something more productive"? I don't see, while I acknowledge that people are making fortunes playing video games and making them, I don't see that as being a high probability venture.

And so I would say, "Can we nourish this interest in some other way?" The reality is that you, as a father, are the one who is controlling the interests of your children. You are the one who has exposed your children to video games, either through the kind of friends that they have, the kind of things that you do, the kind of games that you put in your home, the kind of content that you allow them to watch and encourage them to watch on YouTube.

You have created this interest. Now, you can also then create other interests if you'll be thoughtful about how to do it. So find some other way, change the content that your children are consuming, and you'll change the interests that they have. Remember that none of us wake up and are automatically interested in something.

For me, I am, while I have played computer games and whatnot, I have zero interest in video games because I don't cultivate that area of interest. If I cultivate it, I would have it, but I cultivate other areas of interest. And the same thing for my children. I work hard to cultivate their interest.

So I'd say the first thing that you could do is, if you are concerned about something like this topic, ask yourself, "How can I cultivate the interests in a different direction?" Because you have allowed these things into your home and into their computer that have created this desire, and if you think that this is not the most productive use of that desire, then simply point it in a different direction, and over time, phase out the content that you don't want, and phase in something else that you do want, and turn the interest in another direction.

Nothing, I shouldn't say that, very little of what children are interested in is organic. I changed from nothing to very little because I've been really surprised watching my children develop an interest in cars. I'm not a car guy. I was when I was a kid, but I used to subscribe to the magazines and big 4x4s and whatnot.

I was into that stuff, but I'm not a car guy. I haven't been a car guy in many years. I don't talk about cars. I don't have any interest in them. I don't talk. It's just not a thing. I've never spoken admiringly of a car in the presence of my children.

But then I watch my children just stare out the window as we travel and be super into cars. No magazines, no websites, no YouTube channels about cars, just simply looking out the window. My point is it's an interest and an, what's the word? I don't know the word, aficionado.

It's an interest, a desire, an area of interest for my eldest, but it's not because of my controlling the input. It's simply because I was living in the kind of place where there are a lot of cars, and so you see the cars and become interested in what's outside the window.

And so it's kind of a mixture, right, where the interest is there, but it's there because it's being exposed to a lot of cars. If we were living 100 years ago or 200 years ago and there were just horses all around, then I'm quite sure that an eight-year-old boy would be totally into horses and looking around and observing the good ones and the bad ones, et cetera, because they're around them.

So you can change the reference group and you can steer this into a direction that's more positive. So if you're interested in video creation, then maybe you start with the video games, but then try to bring in something else and move it in a way that might be more possible, might be more effective.

And so I would say a safer place to start would be could you create videos of our family? Could you make little movies of our family, things for local expression, things that would just be more interesting, help to learn the technical skills of running a camera, creating something, telling a story, et cetera, that's not just the same old, same old that everyone else is doing.

And I'm temper that with the fact that there is gonna be the peer pressure of everyone else of it being the cool thing to have your YouTube channel about video games and that's the popular thing. So maybe you go with it to a point. But think, recognize that you can steer that if you're intentional and you find the right content, you find the other, you find the ways of doing it.

Some video creators are into Lego stop motion creation. Some are into video game content creation. So if you don't like the video game stuff, change what they're exposed to and move it in a different direction. Regarding privacy, this is a hard thing to answer. And the problem is that in the current scenario, privacy is very hard to achieve and it's very hard to maintain, as you well know.

Privacy is one of those things, kind of like virginity, right? That once you're no longer a virgin, you're no longer a virgin. And once you're no longer private, you're no longer private. It's just done. There's no going back in the world of the internet. And that's a hard thing to say because is life with no privacy bad?

It's kind of like saying, is there no life after no longer being a virgin? Of course not, right? But once it's lost, it's lost. And this is the struggle that I've had with my own children. I'm like, I could massively, massively increase my personal clout if I started using my children as the very cute props that they are.

I could use my children. I could put them in pictures. I could put them in videos. On occasion, I could put their voices into the show, but I've done it twice and one time it was just a spur of the moment thing. And people like it, but I don't want to use my children to increase my clout because I don't want them to lose this very, very valuable period of innocence and privacy where the internet doesn't have the grasp of them.

I want them to enjoy a life of being carefree. I want them to not understand what it's like to say the wrong thing and anger a bunch of online bullies. I want them to really understand that. I want them to enjoy the innocence and the mental peace and the spiritual peace that they can enjoy from not having to deal with that destructive environment until or unless they're ready to have the skills of learning how to deal with it.

And I want to introduce them to it at a certain point, but certainly not at six and certainly not at eight. So now we get back into probabilities of success. I don't believe that it's possible to be an effective YouTube star and not show your face on YouTube. It just doesn't work.

And so if you're going to have a video game channel, I guess in theory you can shoot a video of you playing the game and then talking over it without a picture of your head, but that's going to be uninteresting to people unless you're just a spectacular player. Like what's going to be interesting to it?

As humans, we're wired for connection. We want to see someone's face. We want to see their eyes. We want to know who they are. And so while there may be a very small number of opportunities where you can create a kind of content, a kind of video style that's actually going to work without seeing someone's face, that's not what your children want to create.

And once you start doing that, once you put your face on the Internet, it never comes off. Is it a big deal? No, right? Most of us as parents have put our children on the Internet. But it's not--it has its own downsides. And once you've lost that, it's a big deal.

And so it's something that deserves to be taken seriously. And if it's not necessary, if there's not a corresponding value for it, I don't think you should do it. I don't think that anybody should use social media who's not making money on social media. I am firmly convinced that the only possible reason to use social media is to make money on social media.

Now, there are a few ways that you can dip your toe in and out. I'm doing a fast right now from Thanksgiving to New Year's. I've removed all my social media platforms from my mobile devices. So I'm not logging in. I'm not doing anything and whatnot. And it's just the thing of like, "Hey, let's see what I can get rid of." And what my observations have been is that for me, social media is a real mixture.

There are things I really value about social media-- Facebook Marketplace, groups. I'm in a bunch of groups where there's good conversations, good ideas. I can buy stuff cheap and easy on Facebook Marketplace. I miss the flow of information. I stay well-informed by Twitter, etc. But about half of it is just a total waste of time.

And so I'm trying to use a total abstention from it to identify those things that bring value to my life and those things that don't. Now, come back to your children. Once they start down the road of being super involved in it, it's just--they're going to keep on pressing down.

And if it's not making them money, I don't think they should be doing it. And I don't see how they're going to make money going down the pathway of what you're talking about. So I think your caution is warranted. I don't think it's a great scenario. It's something that everyone's going to do.

And unless they can articulate a concept, a USP that is going to actually make this-- a USP that is a unique selling proposition that's actually going to differentiate their efforts in the marketplace, I think that keeping them protected and also keeping them focused on a more productive way to gain the skills would be my instinct.

You don't realize--you may, okay, but most people do not realize how strong the internet connections are. And it's not something to be feared. It's something to be understood. But we don't send a 16-year-old and an 8-year-old into the lion's den. We want to make sure that there's a significant time of training.

So I would search desperately for a way to encourage them to build the skills of being a creator and find an outlet for that creativity where they're going to enjoy being-- where they're going to enjoy having their creations observed and enjoyed and push it off at least a few more years to when they can do something and have a little bit more maturity.

I can't imagine myself--I can't imagine putting a 6-year-old and an 8-year-old out as creators, especially when there's essentially zero chance of it paying off for them. >> Yeah, I appreciate that. That is kind of wrapping up a lot of my fears into a good set there. And my primary motivation for having them-- or the older one even try this was less so for about making a channel.

I mean, like you said, I think it's the equivalent of, like, I'm going to be Michael Jordan when I grow up or when we were kids. But--and I think they understand that. What I was hoping to get him to create for was to hear his own voice and kind of learn to really be able to speak-- get some feedback on his own speaking, but doesn't necessarily mean it has to be posted, certainly not publicly, but maybe on a private channel.

But I appreciate that. I'm going to go back and listen to all that again because another thing you reminded me of there was just the no going back part. And that's kind of what I've always feared and the intense pressure that you can feel when you do put your stuff out there.

I remember there's a saying about a guy who, you know, once the community starts talking about you instead of to you, that's like kind of a Rubicon you can't pass. There's a lot of pressure there for creators, of course. You can't--I never anticipated it happening. I never did. But people will say--like my family members, like, "Oh, well, you should read so-and-so about what so-and-so is saying about you." I'm like, "I'm sorry.

I can't do it. I don't have any interest in reading it." And because what happens is when you are dealt with as a public figure and any time you put something on the Internet, you are a public figure. Most normal people know how to differentiate between whether they're interacting with someone who's a blue checkmark versus not.

But when you publish something, you become a form of public figure. And when you're a public figure, there will always be a small subset of people who deny your humanity. And that does not feel good. It is tremendously psychologically destructive. And the only way that I personally deal with it is I ignore it.

I can't deal with it because what happens is it makes me want to rise up and defend myself. I did a video for a guy on a YouTube channel recently one time. And it was funny because I sent over this phenomenal video, in my opinion. And I took this subject that was just-- and I carefully thought through my outline for the video.

I carefully thought through every rebuttal, every question somebody would make. And I made a very tight--in my opinion, I made a very tight and carefully curated video where I systematically presented the information in a coherent way. And I answered each objection. I pointed out each place where my advice was going to be wrong.

Then the video editor got a hold of it and cut my video. And I specifically asked, "Do you need a 12-minute video from me?" "No, no, no." So I sent over a 20-minute video. Video editor got a hold of it, cut my 20-minute video down to 11 minutes. Cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut.

Published. I go and I read the comments. "Yeah, this guy missed this. How could he--?" And I'm sitting here beating my head against the desk. It's like I answered every single one of these knowing exactly what you would do, and here I am. Now, that's just a little pet peeve of mine because it happened to me recently.

What often happens is you go and you start reading about yourself and you're like, "I don't even recognize that." I used to--from now on, from time to time, I joke. I take screenshots and I send them to my wife. But I came across one and it's like somebody was referencing me in a group and some forum.

And they said, "Oh, Radical Personal Finance, is that the guy that's always telling you to buy gold?" And I thought, "That's funny." I guess I can't think of a single episode, although I've meant to do it for a long time where I've said like this is why you buy gold, this is et cetera.

But the fact that I understand why buying gold is like that becomes--and so the point is that you got to be psychologically mature. You got to be able to do it and handle it. And that requires training and consideration. And what I think happens, especially why this public life is so dangerous, is it puts--it makes everything big when people are still being formed.

I think the classic example of this is you see this in Preacher's Kid Syndrome, right? Kids of Preachers or Politician Kid Syndrome, right? PK. Preacher's kids always have these eyes on them. And it often creates--in many cases, Preacher's kids are fine, right? Preacher's love their kids and they want to do the best.

But then this pressure can often just build. And if the child doesn't know how to handle it, then it causes the child to act out in really, really crazy ways sometimes. And instead of it being kind of this low-key thing of, "Yeah, I disagree with my dad about such and such," you wind up having a massive thing, right?

You get Francis Schaeffer and Frankie Schaeffer, right? And Francis Schaeffer, this highly influential Christian theologian, beloved by millions, and his son Frankie Schaeffer, who's like this loud, obnoxious--totally obnoxious TikTok atheist, right? Or you get John Piper and his kid, right? Same exact thing, right? You get this man who is kind and gentle and thoughtful and has his religious convictions, but you don't get this--like, you don't get this respectful disagreement, right?

I got lots of friends who are atheists and their parents are Christians and they're respectful and they appreciate that their parents love them, that they come to a different religious conviction. No, you get this nasty, disgusting, completely grotesque human being who expresses no love for the parents that birthed him and labored, et cetera, and does it all on TikTok.

So this pressure brings out the worst in people. And it's something that doesn't have to happen, but there's a degree of maturity necessary and it's dangerous. It puts a lot of pressure, right? The classic thing about, you know, we've all done stupid things when we were younger. All of us, we've all done stupid things.

But when those stupid things are exposed to the world, it puts you into a crucible. And some people come through the crucible, but a lot of people don't. And I don't see any reason why that crucible should be pursued if there are ways that you can adjust around it.

The crucible will show what's there, but I don't put my kids into--I will not put my children into a crucible, if I have the choice, until or unless they've been carefully prepared for that crucible. And then, fine, right? Some of us, we don't get to pick the path that we go.

But it's a dangerous thing. So, practical point, one, back to what you said. Privacy on the Internet is not possible. Privacy on the Internet is not possible. But certainly, if you do it, then you need to school your children very, very carefully in privacy. And you need to be very, very diligent about using pseudonyms and basically about crafting an alternate identity.

And that's the only way that you could possibly protect them from some of the difficult things that come with being a creator. So, it's like--I think of it like this. Should I send my child off to war? Well, if I'm living at home and there's an army of people literally marching into my town and they are going to come and rape and pillage my family and burn our house, I'm going to hand my children a gun and I'm going to arrange them around the house to protect our house.

But if there's--that is a last-ditch thing. I'm never going to do that unless it were actually required by the circumstances. I don't want everyone to be put in that situation. So, just be aware that the life of a creator is not all that it's cracked up to be. If I were doing this all over again, knowing what I know now, if I were doing this all over again, I would never once take to a microphone and create any kind of content related to me, my name, my ideas, etc.

I would exclusively work as a behind-the-scene marketer. I would become a very skillful marketer and I would create content and that content would never have my name, my face, anything related to me personally associated with it. None of my ideas, I would do it 100% privately. And now, I've asked myself many times, "Well, should I do that in the future?" I've chosen not to thus far.

But if I ever disappear off the internet, if I ever get canceled, if I ever disappear, that's probably the direction I've gone to. And I say that as a fairly mature, fairly emotionally stable, fairly self-confident individual, I would not insert my children into this world if I could at all encourage them to go in another direction that's more productive.

I appreciate it, Joshua. I'm tired because there's so much of that to think about because I think the biggest takeaways are the no going back and what pressure it can exert on a person who, I mean, honestly, I don't even feel the ability to withstand that kind of pressure, let alone the kids.

So, yeah, I go into it with absolute caution, maybe heightened caution than what I had planned before. So, yeah, thank you. Start with what I would do is I would get your children a camera, get them an editing machine, a computer, set up a nice computer that's isolated from the internet, air-gapped completely, and then have them create some stories, whether it's films that have them or create the videos, et cetera.

And then I would set up some kind of group in my family. It could be a private Facebook group, not ideal, but that's one option. It could be a private WhatsApp group. That's another option. It could be just some place where you host the videos with a private password Vimeo account.

And then I would try to get them some eyeballs on it with family members as a way. Here is the reality. And, again, I'm saying this because children are six and eight. The flip side of all this is to say that since privacy is so difficult to maintain and since most of us are probably not going to spend our life hiding from the internet because it's not really a fun way to live and not really necessary in most cases, there is a point in time at which you can use the public exposure as a way to increase the quality of the materials.

Years ago, when I first interviewed Jonathan Harris on the show, back when he was working under the brand Tenkate Talent, he said some things in that interview that have inspired me since then. And just this last weekend, I was talking with some of my family members about it. But one of the things that they did to help their children and are doing to help their children with writing is they're exposing their children's writing in public.

And so instead of just saying, "Hey, here is a page where you can write an essay and then the teacher is going to read it and it's just going to get circular filed," you can say, "Here is a page from an essay. Now take this, type it up, and publish it." And so the writing assignments that they used for their children were often things like sending out – making a post on your blog dedicated to a personal passion project, sending out an email newsletter to your group dedicated to a particular area of interest that you have, making a post on your Instagram profile.

And I watch as children do this so effectively. They'll make an Instagram post and they'll sit and they'll write a five-page essay – sorry, a five-paragraph essay as part of the Instagram profile. And I'm so inspired by it because I'm like, "This is great," because you're getting public exposure for your ideas.

And so I think there's a day and a time in which you say, "Hey, you guys are doing great with this video. Let's go ahead and use the public exposure to increase the motivation to do it well, to do a good job with it." Totally in favor of that.

And I think that's a powerful tool that I want to use in the future. I don't think that it's practical or desirable for most of us to hide from the Internet forever. But I think hiding from the Internet at six and eight is probably the right move. And then reassess it every year as you see what they – how they are handling things.

So tough question. And if – we're all as parents. I talk about this question with my friends every time I get the chance because as parents, there are very few things that are fundamentally new in parenting. This is one of those things. There is no playbook. This has not existed before today.

Ten years ago, it was not possible for our children to do what our children can do today. That means that there is a whole set of exciting opportunities that people are capitalizing on. There are YouTube creators who are five years old, seven years old, nine years old, making millions of dollars per year with their videos.

It's amazing. But it's also a whole new thing that brings with it a whole rash of challenges, difficulties, et cetera. And we often don't get to choose whether our children will be the ones that are going to be successful with it or whether our children are going to be the ones who are going to really struggle with it.

And you can see the data and the evidence very, very clearly of the mental struggles, the depression, the bullying, the lack of self-confidence and self-worth that's out there. A couple months ago, when all the data was revealed from the Facebook leak, the court case of all of Facebook's internal surveys, it is very, very clear that we are harming children.

It's very, very clear that we are harming them in what we expose them to. So this tool is fundamentally – it's like a gun. It's a loaded gun. It's something that when you need it, it's incredibly important. It has tremendous utility. But it is insanely dangerous. And I've made the choice.

I teach my children to shoot. And I teach them a whole bunch of rules associated with it because I want to protect them from the gun. So I don't think that the right way to teach about the danger of a gun is to deny the existence of guns and say we're never going to have guns in our house and you're never going to touch one.

That seems totally silly to me. So I try to – I have my own way and I'm absurdly conscious of the dangers, et cetera, and try to plan for those things. And so I feel like a proper – that's a good metaphor to think about modern social media connectedness, video connectedness, media platform connectedness.

Incredibly powerful, incredibly useful, incredibly important in the right situation, but also exceedingly dangerous even to the point of taking lives. We move on to Bryce. Bryce, welcome to the show. How can I serve you today, sir? Hi. Thanks, Joshua, for having me on and thanks for everything you do.

One thing – I think it was John was before me, but we have a family shared album on Apple that only the family can look at. And that's how we share pictures of kids and stuff back and forth. We don't put anything online of them. Absolutely. Wonderful. And I should have probably used this pseudonym for my name.

I'll remember that in the future for my children. Shoot. But I received an inheritance from my grandfather passing. And I listened to an episode – I think it was a couple episodes back where you were saying you needed the best – or a lot of the cash that you have on hand.

And I haven't touched that cash. I just put it into a savings account and have not touched it. And I wanted to see what your thoughts were as far as where to put that at currently and where you think it's going in the future. So to begin with, before I ask about any amounts, I'm going to give you what I believe is the perfect answer to this question.

And then you'll see then where it's – because it will give you the framework. And then we'll maybe talk about a few more details. So as I understand it, you have received an inheritance after the death of your grandfather. And that inheritance is just at the moment sitting in cash in a bank account.

And now the question is what do I do with it. Is that right? Correct. OK. In an ideal world, a perfect world, here is the situation. In a perfect world, you and I both have a list of clearly articulated goals. Those goals have been drawn from a vision, a vision that we have together with our most important and involved family members sat down and clarified in our own minds and then committed to paper.

This is what we do. This is what we want. This is the vision for what we want in our lives. This is the vision for how we want to live. This is the vision for what we want in the days to come. Then we take that vision. We break that vision down into a series of goals or a series of steps.

Here are the steps that will lead us in the direction of that vision. And then we have those steps and we're already working on those steps. We're working on the next step that's leading down this pathway to the vision, to the accomplishment of the vision. The way that you get there is you get the vision and you put yourself in a place where you see the vision.

Then you ask yourself, OK, I'm going to pretend this is all accomplished. How did I do this? And you think back to today and you ask yourself, how did I do this? And then you put down the steps and you make a piece of paper. So then when an unexpected infusion of cash or resources arrives in our life, we say, oh, this is great.

I received a bonus at work. I received an inheritance from the death of a family member. I won the lottery. Then we just simply pull out our notebook, which has on it a clear step-by-step plan. And we just say, OK, I can check off step 2.3, step 2.4, step 2.5.

This infusion of cash is big enough to immediately move me down to step 7. Great. And then you move on with your life. That is, in my mind, the perfect ideal. That's how it should be. We should all or we could all, I don't like to should on people, we could all have a vision, have a plan to achieve it.

And then when there are infusions of resources that are unexpected, those infusions simply speed up our progress towards the fulfillment of that vision. And that should feel really, really good because then we know that, hey, this was a blessing. Now, obviously, most of us are not that organized. We might like to be in that position, but we're not.

We're not that organized. We're not that clarified. The vision is a little bit fuzzy, a little bit loose. We're not really sure how to get there. We don't know what the next step is. And so we come back to real life. But that is my answer is that that's what in an ideal world should happen.

So what do you do now if that didn't do the case, if that's not the case? Because you're calling me with a question that, in my opinion, probably you could say you already have the answer to this question. So if you're calling me and you already should know the answer to the question is because you don't have that clear vision, you're still working on it.

So then what do you do? Well, you ignore the money temporarily. You sit down and you start working on that plan. You kind of create the vision. You figure out the plan of how you could achieve the vision. And then you look down at the money and you say, how can I use this money to help me achieve that vision for myself and my family?

So that's kind of the big picture. Then we can get to specifics. Is that helpful at all as a starting point? It is. It is. And I appreciate that. Walking me down that path there. And now we can get to specifics if you want as well. So let me for now just stop with that and then call back next week and talk about specifics.

Because if you'll spend some time doing it, because anything that you want to do is totally fine. Maybe your financial plan was that I'm going to -- my next goal right now is I'm working on paying off my car. Then I'm going to pay off my student loans. Then I'm going to start a business.

Okay, well, I owe $20,000 on my car. I owe $20,000 on my student loans. And I need some money to start a business. Oh, look, here's $200,000 over here. Now what should I do with it? And then you go through it. Or maybe my next plan was I've already started a business and I'm going to pay off my house.

Well, pay off my house. People I think often have this wrongheaded idea that somehow something special has to be done with an infusion of cash from an inheritance. That's not true. It should just go to the next thing. But what can happen is that we often just -- we often -- we're not prepared for it.

And so then what happens is we start entertaining all kinds of possibilities. Oh, look, grandpa died. I got an inheritance here. Maybe I should go and do this. Maybe I should go do that, et cetera. And then we feel unsure. We're like, well, I don't know. Is this what I should be doing with the money?

So for you, think about that and then call me back next week and we'll talk specifically about the details after you've done it. And just what I mean is take some time. Think about the specifics of the plan, the vision and the plan of how you would get there.

Then come back and ignore the inheritance and then ask yourself the second question, all right, now the inheritance is here, how can this speed up my results? All right, two callers left. 714 area code, go ahead, please. How can I serve you today? >> Hi, Joshua, can you hear me?

>> Sounds good. Go ahead. >> Hi. I want to thank you -- my wife and I want to thank you for the last couple of podcasts about reading aloud to your children. I think it was just really great. We have a newborn who's less than under six months old.

And one of the questions, we've taken a cursor look at some of the book lists. I'm going to order the other ones. But I was wondering if you just offhand had your -- this is radical personal finance type. Any reading aloud suggestions for babies? >> You can pretty much read almost anything.

And with babies -- so with baby babies, then the most important thing is just simply talking to them. I read an academic brief, an excerpt, a summary. And the thing that makes the biggest difference with babies is the interaction. And so just talking to the babies constantly, the two-way conversation and the -- that's the best thing for babies.

For reading, I would say read books that you like and that the baby likes. And they're pretty simple. You're going to find books that have beautiful pictures, et cetera. What I need to do and I've been wanting to do is -- there's been a lot of interest in this since I started mentioning it.

I've been needing to get out the video camera, get out and start going through our bookshelves and giving you lists. Because we have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of books now. But at the moment, they're all boxed up and sitting in a storage unit waiting for me to clarify the next move of our living arrangements.

So I can't physically do it right now. But there are tons and tons and tons of books. The best thing, I think, to start with for a baby is just start going to the library and just get your baby -- you can get a library card for your baby.

And we have waited until it can be a special thing for the children to get their first library card. So we didn't do it with babies, but you can. And just start checking out a few dozen books a week. And with babies, right, go to library story time at the library.

And that's where you put your babies on the mat and they play around and whatnot. And just use it as a chance to go and meet other people and have a little play date and get out of the house and get books. But with babies, the most important thing is the pictures, the colors, and in some cases, the repetitive text.

Now, I don't think that you don't need anything more than picture books until at least almost two years old. Because the children at two years old don't have an attention span where they can handle actual stories. They go for a little bit. If you do it in short segments, they will start to listen.

But most of the time, it's just the same book over and over and over and over and over again. And it's the repetition that makes the difference. I don't have offhand. I could, if I call my wife. Here, let's see if she's in the other room. Babe, you're up.

Come here. Please. Hold on. Let me plug in a microphone for you. The question is, here, I'll give you a pair of headphones to plug that in there right there so we have a microphone for you. Stick it in there, number two. Good. So, the question is, what books for babies?

And I've got a listener here who is interested in, has a bunch of, has a bunch of, has a bunch of, sorry, has a new baby. And has been inspired by my talking about reading. Calls and says, what books do I have for babies? And the answer was, go to the library and start with that.

And all the rest of them are boxed up and I can't remember any of the titles. But I'm sure you do better. So, how do you find books for babies? And he's on the line. You can talk to him. Hi. Oh, I want to turn you on. There you go.

All right. Go. There we go. Now try. Hello? Yep. Go ahead. Okay. Hi. Hi. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. The one thing that sticks out to me from when our kids were young, young, young, is the pictures of the faces. They have these baby books at the library, these board books, where they have some words, but basically the words are a waste of time.

And the children just really like looking at the pictures of the faces. They're babies making crying faces, laughing faces, just various expressions. And the babies will flip through those same books over and over and over. Also, we've read that the black and white books are supposed to be good for their cognitive development.

So, black, white, red, that kind of thing. We've read that in various places. I can't give you any evidence of that, but the library also has that kind of book. Were there any lists? How did you start? Because you started accumulating a bunch of books, and obviously you used the library, but where did you start finding the lists and things?

Me? Yeah, for baby books. Oh. All the picture books. We've got hundreds and hundreds of them. Babies like whatever. It doesn't matter. They're not understanding. How did you choose the books that you got at that age? Oh, just whatever looked interesting to me at the time. If it had nice illustrations.

Sometimes the illustrations are just computer generated, and they're really not worth looking at. But if you can find an illustration that's drawn, that's worth looking at, that someone actually put time into, then that's good. Or the photographs. Photographs of the people's faces. The babies love those. Right. But are there, did you look at, where did we, how many books did you buy, and did you buy them?

Did you find them on the side of the road? How did you acquire all those books? All of our board books came probably a side of the road or other people, because they're like $6.99 each for some lift the flap book, and then the flaps break. The children do love the flaps, though.

They like the lift the flaps. Better to get them from the library, tape them back together, and just say, "My kid broke it," rather than having your own $6.99 out. Right. So then, did we buy books, or were they given to us? How did we acquire so many? Because we didn't buy a lot of those books.

Oh, no, we haven't bought any many. But I do remember one other kind of baby book, now that you mention it. The kind, usually the brand that is common is Pretty Books, P-R-I-D-D-Y. I think it's a British company. Roger Pretty is the guy's name, or the name they're published under.

It's got pictures, actual pictures of real objects, and they're in squares, different colors of squares. So, pictures of toys, pictures of vehicles, pictures of bath time, pictures of things the child will encounter outside, just different topics. And they're actual pictures of real things, but they're meant to be vague, not vague as far as what they are, but there's no brand names in them.

There's no identifying marks. There's no Graco stroller. It's just a stroller. Right. That kind of thing. I remember those, too, because, again, their faces, many of them are faces, and they're real things, real pictures of pajamas and a lamp and a mobile and slippers. And they'll go back to those ones over and over.

So, then what age do you start, have you started reading stories or notice that the children start actually listening to stories? Even the two-year-old now doesn't love stories. He'll make it through one book at a time, one of those easy reader books if I'm reading to an older child, but he's not even really at story stage yet.

So, the point is, I guess, and, by the way, I forgot I didn't get your name caller, but the point is you got some time, and it really doesn't matter. It's more, in my opinion, with the babies, and you can see if you agree with this or not, but in my opinion, it's more about the time and the sensation of being together.

And, hey, look, here's a few pictures, and then three minutes later, all right, okay, I'm going to go do something else. And they love to bring you the books and look at them, and you're three pages in, and they slap it closed and go get another one. So, it's more about the time together at that age than it is about the actual text.

I've just noticed our four-year-old is just transitioning to be able to have an attention span to listen to a chapter for 10 to 15 minutes. And so, like at four, we've got a 10-minute attention span, but he'll get off in the event. So, any other questions for her or me?

Does that help at all? That helps immensely. It kind of echoes what we've been experiencing right now. We have some of the black and white books and other very short stories, one-liners and basically pictures, and describing it to her. So, it's been working for us, and we're just wondering if there's more and what else, what next pages to prepare for.

So, that's great. I did have one other question. Yeah, before you go to the other question. If you want inspiration, check out some of Glenn Doman's writings, D-O-M-A-N. He was one of the most well-known names in the Teach Your Baby to Read movement. He wrote all these books about Teach Your Baby to Swim, Teach Your Baby to Read, etc.

But if you want me to summarize kind of my opinion on the whole thing, it's basically spend time with your children and spend time with them constantly. Expose them to lots of things. Go to the beach, play in the sand, play in the rocks, play in the grass. If you look at all the Montessori stuff, it's sensory stuff, and it's basically time.

So, at that stage, it's more about conversation back and forth. And I think the best thing you can do is train yourself to give vocabulary. Train yourself as a parent to just simply prattle on about what's happening, etc., and talk to them about what's happening. And they're not going to be able to answer, but they're interested in you, your face.

Look at them, talk to them, spend time pouring words in in the form of conversation, and then you'll transition naturally into the actual reading. All right. I'm going to close the door with your next question. That's perfect. Actually, my question was actually about Montessori style of teaching. Did you or Mrs.

Radical Personal Science have any opinions about it? I'm unconvinced that any one particular thing is somehow life-changing. So, is Montessori great? Sure. I don't think it's fine. Is any one particular thing fine and great? I kind of feel the way about these different disciplines. I kind of feel about them the way that I feel about a lot of Christian denominations right now, where it's like, yeah, let's argue about whether being a Reformed Baptist is better than being a Baptist or being this style of Presbyterian is better.

It's like these are important conversations, but on the whole, when you look at it, there's a lot more of an overlap between these denominations than there is a lot of distinction. And so, you can get really into the weeds on the distinction. I can sit and argue with anybody about the stuff, but also I'm like, what's the point?

The point is that you have on the whole, you're taking action on something that matters. And so, what I observe about some of the different schools is, number one, as a parent, you have to say, what can we do and what can we handle as a family and what resources are available to us?

And so, if there is a Montessori school that's a mile away from your house and you've decided that we would really love our children to have that kind of classroom environment, as far as I'm concerned, even if there's some other choice that's 10 miles away, maybe you could have the Chinese Immersion Montessori school 10 miles away.

But this one is a mile away. Choose the one that's right there. Is it better or worse? It doesn't matter, right? It's better. Second thing is, in general, you're starting from such a low peer group that it's like anything is better. So, like on the reading thing, it's like, all right, I got a child.

Well, if you listen to what we talked about, that study where they went into different households and they studied low-income people, middle-income people, and high-income people, and they found that the number of words was dramatically higher for the high-income people versus the low-income people, then you could say, all right, well, the simple thing is just simply talk to my children.

That's what I just said. Talk to your children. Low-income parents, middle-income parents, and high-income parents are basically all going to love their children the same. They're all going to want the same for their children. But what the high-income parents are doing is filling their babies with words. They're filling with relationship, with communication.

And so look and say, in my circumstances, what can I do? We have not chosen to go to a Montessori school because every time I look at the cost of such schools, both financially and in terms of a disruption to our family life, thus far I've always decided that it's just not worth it.

I read the articles and they say, well, listen, if you can have a classroom environment with this and that and then we do this sensory manipulation and whatnot, then it's better. Maybe I'm not understanding. Maybe I haven't done enough research. But I figure if you can't give me a good, compelling reason why I should really think that this is the best in the world, I'm just going to say, it's good, but I can do better at home.

And so for me, it's a matter of cost. Cost financially matters, but also cost in terms of the cost to the family, what we can do. And my wife is wonderful with the children. I don't really click really well with babies as much as I do with older children.

She's got the patience and she's really wonderful and she does a great job. And I look at it and say, what's better than having mom available? Why should we choose someone else rather than mom? And so what she does is she goes and she's gone now, but she goes and gets the stuff and she puts in the work, et cetera.

But I can also see that if let's say that she needed a break, then a wonderful way for her to have a few hours to herself every day is to make sure that the child is in a local Montessori school. I'm totally okay with it. And I don't think that one is better than another.

I'm convinced that there are many, many high-quality, good ways of educating children, helping children, training children, et cetera. But when you get into them and you boil them down to their essence, I think there's a lot of commonalities. And so as I would say, my impression, never having enrolled my child in a Montessori school, my impression is that what's unique about that particular approach is we have lots and lots of sensory input, lots and lots of child-sized, child-level stuff that they can play with.

And lots of time with people and lots of time to play. Well, I can reproduce that in my own home and have a lot of benefits from it. Maybe I don't get it perfect with all the other classmates, et cetera, but we have the ability to do that and I can do more interesting things that they don't do.

So I'm not convinced that one philosophy is vastly superior. We have an eclectic approach. I don't think that Charlotte Mason is the be-all, end-all. I've just always been inspired by some of her phrases and some of her philosophy. But I've never read my way through all of her works and I don't see possibly how a teacher that died 100 years ago would have the full ability to articulate the perfect way to educate your children in 2021.

We live in a radically different world. So I'm inspired by a few principles, a few phrases, et cetera. I'm inspired by quality book lists and living books and the idea of spreading a delectable feast before my children so that they can have exposure to lots of things. So they're not just automatically pigeonholed into something because that's what I do.

I don't want my children to become a financial planner because I'm a financial planner. I want them to be exposed to financial planning and painting and driving trucks and being homemakers and gardening. I want them to be exposed to things so that they have more fodder. So I'm much more interested in you as a father looking and saying, "What would be best for our family?" I think your wife's needs are more important than your children's needs.

And so what would work well for her? What would work well for the children? And there's no perfect thing. It's a matter of saying what's working now with our resources and then let's adjust from time to time and recognize you don't have to stick with what you're doing. I feel like I beat this too much, but I think it's the single most important thing, especially for young parents.

What you're doing today may not work tomorrow. So all you need to be worrying about is what we're doing today working for today. And then as circumstances change, you can adjust and you can adapt and you can adjust as you should. So I don't have a horse in the race as far as what's best.

I would say articulate what you need and then go and look and see what the options are and then make an informed choice at that point. Awesome. Thank you very much. My pleasure. Yeah, that was great details. And again, it will change over time. Is this your first baby?

Yes, it is. So first baby, you know, your wife may be totally into being able to help your baby and work. And she just may be the world's greatest mother. A few years from now, you might have another baby and she needs someone to help. And so the best thing might be enroll your child, enroll your three-year-old into a local school or a daycare sometime or have someone come and help you in the house.

Or maybe not. Maybe she can handle it. Maybe it's something that she wants to do. And so, you know, my wife is pretty, pretty hardcore on some of her convictions. Right. If she sees -- we were at a resort. We were at a resort, I don't know, eight months ago, something like that, a beach resort.

And we took it -- we put the kids into one of the, like, the kids care things. And they had a big, beautiful place, lots and lots of toys. And so she's like, okay, I'm going to enroll the children. I don't like to do it, but I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to put the children in here and it will be a good chance for them to have a chance to interact with other people.

So she went back after an hour to check on them. And they're sitting there watching Moana. And she didn't get angry, but, like, she marched those kids out of there fast. She's like, you're not watching that garbage. And so, like, my wife is a woman of very strong conviction.

And so she has her convictions of what she wants and she's going to make sure that things happen the way that she wants them to happen. And so what was my point? My point was that you got to focus on what's right for you and gain from other people, but do what's right for you.

And your wife is different than mine, different than every other woman. And so you'll have to figure out what works in your personal philosophy. And that's how it should be. This should be personalized education, personalized choices for personal families. All right, Nick, you thought we'd never get to you, but here I am.

Welcome to the show. How can I serve you today, sir? Thank you, Joshua. I have a question regarding this idea of borrowing against assets. I may have learned this from your Twitter account this year, that the ultra-rich will borrow against their massive assets and then use that money, which is then not considered income.

So they don't have to pay taxes on it. Yes. So I understand this at a high level. I just don't understand how it works in year two, three and so on. Because you have the loan from the first year that you did this that you have to repay. And now you need next year's expenses.

So how does this work in practice? It works in practice in a customized way depending on the scale of the person. So let's try to give a couple of very, very simple examples. Okay. Let's say that you -- let me use small numbers and kind of wild appreciation to prove the point and then you could try to figure out what's practical.

Let's say that you today have one rental house that is worth $200,000. And that rental house is owned completely debt-free. And you need $50,000 to live on. So in kind of just making up round numbers, you go and you put a $100,000 mortgage on the house. So you borrow $100,000 from the house.

That gives you $50,000 to live on and it gives you $50,000 that you could use to pay the mortgage payments back. Your mortgage payments are $1,000 per month. So what you've done is you have borrowed $100,000 from your $200,000 house and you have mortgage payments of $1,000 a month.

Now, I don't have the spreadsheet in front of me, but just fast forward. Let's say that it's three years later and you've taken your $36,000 and you've paid those mortgage payments. But your house value has increased and you've paid back $36,000 of your $100,000 mortgage. Now, your house value has increased from $200,000 to $300,000.

Well, you can borrow again. You can borrow another $200,000 off the house now and you can pull off money for living expenses and money to pay the mortgage back. And then it increases again. You borrow and you can have money set aside to pay the mortgage payments and you can have money to live on.

And as long as your asset values are increasing, if you get the numbers right, and I'm kind of failing with my numbers just doing this spontaneously here to get the right amortization schedule and all of that. But if you get your numbers right, you can do this on an ongoing basis.

Now, what if you add into that the fact that your house is not just relying on appreciation, it's also being rented out. This is the classic scenario for real estate investors where this concept is the most proven. Because you have a house and what you do is in many markets, or at least the United States, in general, if you have a borrowing ability, you can rent a property out for enough where the tenant will pay the mortgage for you.

Because you can use your good credit, your good name to borrow from a bank, and then usually you are renting to a tenant who either doesn't have the money or the credit score or the inclination to go and borrow for his own mortgage. And so he's paying you a rental payment.

And that rental payment will exceed the cost of the mortgage. And then the rents will adjust based upon the market and they adjust based upon the price of houses. You go into an inexpensive state in a rural town and the rents are lower than they are in a big city in an expensive state.

So the numbers kind of are consistent across the board. So basically if you have a house, then in many ways you can just simply set it up and you can basically borrow 100% of the cost of the house. The tenant pays down the house and then as the house appreciates, you can repeat that process every few years.

So the tenants are always using their rents to pay your mortgage payments. So your mortgage is covered and then you can refinance the house every few years if the property values are increasing. You can refinance the house every few years and take off the gain out as a tax-free loan.

And your tenants will continually service your debt for you. Now, expand that out to a wealthy person and give yourself a little bit of margin where this doesn't work if you have one house at $200,000. You're not far enough ahead. But maybe you've got a real estate portfolio that's worth $20 million.

And what you're doing is you're borrowing out, say, a few million dollars. You don't borrow every year. Just whenever you refinance a house, you put money into a bank account and you use the money as you need it. And you can get the whole thing to work where your tenants just are continually paying your mortgages for you, servicing your debt.

Your assets are increasing in value and you're just simply continually borrowing against those assets. So in real estate, it works beautifully because you have appreciation of assets. You have mortgage pay down based upon the rents that you're receiving for the property. And you have the tax benefits of depreciation which offset the income that you receive from the portfolio.

Now, you can go on to other areas. You can go on to stocks. Let's say that you have a million dollars of Tesla stock. Well, you can go and you can do a margin loan for a million dollars of Tesla stock. And you can do a margin loan of $300,000.

That gives you $300,000 of cash that you can spend. Now, what happens if your Tesla stock increases in value from a million dollars to two million dollars? Well, you have the ability to take out another margin loan for you to make your payments, your interest payments, on your existing margin loan and cover it.

And then you can go ahead and repeat the process. If your assets get big enough and if you can own assets that are increasing in value, and if you can put financing in place on those assets, then you have the ability to borrow against the assets without selling them.

And as long as the portfolio, either through dividends or rents or through capital growth, can grow enough to cover the interest payments and the cost of the debt, you can repeat that for a very long time. Very rarely will anybody repeat it forever. Usually there will be various liquidity events.

And so you sell a business. Oh, look, here is an actual sale. Here's a bunch of cash. And so the cash comes in. You clear the loans and repeat the process over and over again. But the idea is the longer you can hold assets, the better because you have more opportunities for growth.

And it's very efficient because you're not paying transaction costs to sell them, to buy them, to trade them, et cetera. And you're not paying taxes. And so once you reach a point in wealth that your assets are substantially larger than what's needed, and this is generally -- this happens for wealthy people because the way that you become wealthy is by not consuming all of your income.

And so a wealthy person is generally in the habit of far underspending his income, whereas a middle-class person is often in the habit of spending right up to his income. And the way that you get really wealthy is by spending 50% of your income, 30% of your income, 20% of your income.

And so when you do that and your wealth becomes so large that you can continue your lifestyle with a small fraction of it, then the buy, borrow, and hold until death plan works really well as long as it's an asset that you can get financing on. Is there a book or some sort of resource that you would recommend that would have all of these strategies written down in a place where I can review them and re-review them?

I have not read one that deals with that in detail because it's difficult to make it work practically. You have to actually have access to the financing. You have to actually have access to it practically speaking. The best book that's pretty comprehensive that I always recommend is very hard to read is Jeff Schnepper's book called How to Pay Zero Taxes.

It's a comprehensive collection of tax savings strategies, but it's very difficult to read because it's poorly laid out in terms of usability. But one of the things that he talks about in the very beginning of that book – let me grab my coffee so I can look at the table of contents.

But the very first place that you start is with tax-exempt income. So there are various forms of income that are tax-exempt that are just simply not even income. And that's the key is that when you recognize that debt is not income, then it makes it much simpler for you to go through and recognize, "Oh, wait.

How can I use debt?" So here are – here from the tax-free income. So here's, as always, the problem with tax planning is there's generally no one – there's no one big idea. But there are lots of benefits, like hospitalization premiums, our tax-free group life insurance premiums, accident and health group, employee death benefits, meals and lodgings, employee discounts, workers' comp, et cetera.

So you go through all the different forms of receiving fringe benefits that are not income. Then you go through all the deductions, et cetera. So I guess he doesn't even talk about that in the beginning. So – but that's the book that I always start people on who are genuinely interested.

It's just really hard to get through. So there you go. That's my answer. All right. Thank you very much, Joshua. My pleasure. And with that, we wrap up our – with that, we wrap up our Q&A call for today. We think if I have any closing thoughts for you, if you would like to join me next week on Friday, I'd love to have you.

Go to patreon.com, search Radical Personal Finance, and you will find the show there, and you can join me next week. Would love to have you for that. Remember that you can sign up for personal consultation at radicalpersonalfinance.com/consult. When I can get those books out of the attic, I will.

I know that – I hope that you guys like it. I always feel when I publish those shows, I always feel a little guilty, and I'm like, "I should talk more about the stuff everyone else talks about." But as I see it, this is the stuff that matters, and so that's what you get here at Radical Personal Finance.

I hope that's helpful to you, and I hope that you're able to use that as inspiration and see the connection between these traditionally non-financial things and their very real financial benefits. Thank you for listening to today's show. I will be back with you very soon. Are you ready to make your next pro basketball, football, hockey, concert, or live event unforgettable?

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