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Visit yamava.com/palms to discover more. It's Friday and today, live Q&A. ♪ Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insights, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.

My name is Joshua Sheets. Today is Friday, February 18, 2022. And today, we get back to live Friday Q&A. Open lines, you can call in, talk with me about anything that you want. I don't screen, I don't censor. You are in charge. ♪ What that means is it works just like Talk Radio.

You can call in, you can talk about anything that you want, ask any questions, request any clarification, discuss anything, make any comments of your own. That's what we do here on Friday, any time when I can arrange the appropriate technology to be able to record a podcast. If you would like to join me on one of these Friday Q&A shows, you are welcome to do that by becoming a patron of the show.

Go to patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance, patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance. Sign up to support the show there on Patreon, and that will gain you access to one of our Friday Q&A shows. We begin with John in Pennsylvania. John, welcome to the show. How can I serve you today? Hey, Josh. Well, thanks for taking my call.

I have been out of work for about a year, a little bit more, actually. And I recently got a job, a new position I'm going to be starting soon. And I have a bit of concerns. One is I have to brush up on a new domain in my field quite a bit that I don't have experience with.

But the other bigger one that I was hoping you could help with was, even though I had worked from home prior to being laid off for about nine months, I never really kind of got into a full groove. I did good things like getting dressed every day and having a dedicated space, but I never felt as effective working from home as I did in the office.

Also, I kind of always felt bad for people who started work from home and never got the in-person experience with the coworkers like I had. So this job is fully remote. And I just wonder if you have any advice or opinions on both working effectively as a remote worker from home, which I assume you do, and also with connecting with colleagues in a meaningful way.

It's fully remote and it's expected to be fully remote into the future? That's correct. I will have the opportunity to travel. I'm sure right now it's as needed only, but hopefully I'll be able to connect directly with the people in the offices eventually. But my role is fully remote, yeah.

Are you aware of whether or not the company has things like quarterly in-person meetings or an annual retreat or something that facilitates in-person connection? I'm not yet, but I assume when things get back to whatever they call normal, they will probably institute some form of that. And they may do some virtually as well.

It seems like it's kind of a company that would foster that sort of thing. Yeah. Well, I think that the future, in my opinion, I think the future is that most of our work is done at a distance, but that we facilitate opportunities for in-person connection. I think that there's no question that there are many benefits to the fully in-person environment, but in today's world, it seems like there are the countervailing benefits for a remote work environment are also quite significant.

So I think many companies are going to find themselves in a place where most of the work that is done is done remotely. And then that they solve some of the needs for human connection, for relationships, et cetera, with being together in person, quarterly meetings, an annual retreat, team building exercises, things like that.

That's my guess as far as what I think is going to happen going forward. And my reasons, the reasons that I think that is true, if you look at the advantages for both the employer and the employee of having remote work, they are very, very high. The advantages for the employer involve vastly lower costs, meaning significantly cheaper, no need for big, giant office buildings, no need to maintain a bunch of real estate, just simply send the employee a computer and give them a stipend for their internet connection.

And so I think that there are a lot of lower costs. We're getting better at being able to count, figure out productivity. Basically companies now are accustomed to the fact that they have to have new metrics that don't just involve seeing someone's face in the office to know whether they're working or not.

And so I think they're getting better. Now there's no question I think that there are some companies that have said, "No, it doesn't work for us. It doesn't work for our culture. We want to have an environment where people are physically together." And so there's going to be competition, but I think a lot of workers also so much appreciate the ability to be remote and to work remotely and all of the lifestyle benefits that opens up, that they're making sure that they take those remote jobs.

So I expect the future to be kind of a mixture of them. So what do you do? It is a real problem for you in terms of how do you make a good impression, how do you build those kinds of relationships. So to begin with, for you, I think the most important thing is to know what you're actually being hired to do.

You have to be very, very clear on what the metrics are. What am I going to be judged based upon what criteria am I going to be judged? So you need to know what is expected of you. What are your performance metrics? And then you need to make sure that you're hitting your performance metrics.

There are little things that you could do, but at the end of the day, it's all about performance. And so if you know what you're going to be judged on and you can hit those performance metrics, then that will be excellent for you. I think one of the things that is extraordinarily important is to have a really good workspace.

And this here, you have to just look at your house, look at your work environment, consider your children and ask yourself if you have an appropriate workspace. Having children, I think, is a major challenge to being at home. The noise, the interruptions, the kind of connectedness with the household, all of that can be a major impediment to your getting work done.

And so you have to find a solution that allows you to work effectively. I think some of the best solutions, certainly if you have a great basement office where it's separate from the house, if you've got, if you can convert a part of your garage to make it separate and sound isolated by putting some sort of office in your garage, that's good.

A backyard shed if you're in kind of a suburban neighborhood, but if you put in a really great backyard shed and that becomes your office, these are all good options that I think are worth investing into because you want to know, you want to have the confidence of knowing I can go to work and I can get work done so that you have a reliable, consistent work environment.

I think what you definitely want to do is you want to invest into proper working infrastructure, whatever that is for you. So if that means a standup desk or, you know, a walking desk, if it means a really great office chair, if it means the right internet connections, if it means a great camera setup, if you're going to be on zoom all the time, make sure that you've got a great camera setup to make everything simple and easy.

And so, so you can perform your job effectively, so you can hear everyone well, et cetera, and just deliver on your performance metrics. Now, in terms of actually, in terms of actually connecting with coworkers, I would prioritize any kind of in-person opportunity. I don't know, meaning what I mean is maybe there's some techniques, maybe sending good email emails and being showing up in the Slack channel in an appropriate way.

Maybe those are good ways of establishing great interpersonal connections. But I think the most important thing is when possible, make friends with your coworkers so that you can, so that when there are questions in online communication, those questions are weighed in the context of a relationship with a real person.

I think what's very difficult about online communication is, especially with so much written communication, so much, you know, so many Slack channels and et cetera, being the primary way of communicating is it's hard to convey those interpersonal things that tell whether you're serious or whether you're joking about something.

And so I think to the, as quickly as possible, build the personal relationships when possible so that that facilitates the other more difficult communication channels. Beyond that, you know, as with anything, learn the company culture, get in there and figure out who your boss is, figure out how to make them happy.

And if you do that, things work well. I don't have any special wisdom though, beyond that, other than to say that those who find a job that's a good fit for them, find out what their performance metrics are and do it effectively, those people will always win no matter the context.

I appreciate it. Thank you. I'd already re-listened to some of your audio from the courses that I took from you and all that stuff was really helpful as well. So thank you. Good. My pleasure. All right, we go on to James. James, welcome to the show. How can I serve you today?

Hey Joshua, appreciate you having me on. I was last on the show to ask your thoughts about how I might grow my blog, but since then I've not focused directly on growing the blog. I think the 20/80 rule you've talked about before is applicable. That my purpose behind the blog was really, I love teaching and coaching.

And I found that I can get more leverage by pivoting my day job to doing that. Wonderful. And so I've recently started a new role in my organization where I do some corporate training and I'm working on my organization's learning and people development strategy, but it's only a temporary role through the end of June.

And so that's got me thinking on what do I want to do next for my next role? And I've been doing your career and income course, and I was struck by the part where you said you've considered corporate training before because you love teaching. And so I wanted to ask you what were some of the different career paths you've considered to indulge your love of teaching and how did you decide which one was best for you?

So I think that when you realize that you genuinely enjoy teaching, it opens up so many different avenues. I could, I believe if I were hireable, I could very happily be a high school teacher. I could teach a number of subjects. There's a number of things that I would thoroughly enjoy teaching on and I could be happy as anything just in a local high school working as a high school teacher.

I could enjoy teaching college, being a college professor. A friend of mine who I was recently talking with, who was interviewing for a job as a college professor and I was going over again and I was surprised I really reviewed with him. I was like, here's all the reasons why I think this is such a wonderful, a wonderful job, just an amazing opportunity to be in this kind of very stimulating environment where, so I would genuinely derive a significant amount of joy from those two things.

I say that because don't brush past them. Usually we brush past things like being a high school teacher because of limited income, but the income can be plenty to live a very comfortable lifestyle on. And so, and then in, and in addition, you can always do other things for income as well.

So if you are someone who's thinking about a career change, you could be a very great fit for simply going and being a traditional teacher in a traditional classroom. So that would be something worth considering. If you go beyond that, then like I mentioned with being a corporate trainer, there is, there are teaching opportunities in virtually all industries, virtually all companies.

And when you recognize that what you're skilled at or what you enjoy is being a teacher, then you can just simply identify one of those things, one of those, those niches that you would enjoy teaching in. And if you enjoy the classroom environment, the world's open to you. And I think we're also living in a really wonderful environment for independent teachers, whether that's independent teachers in a traditional format locally, or whether it's independent teachers teaching virtually to broader audiences.

I can think of a number of topics that I'm interested in where there are people who make their living. They have, they create a small platform in their area of skill, area of expertise, and then they, they host regular classes and it's, they get people from across the country to come in, sit for their classes, and they make their living on that.

And if you run the numbers on how profitable it can be to sell tuition to your courses, the numbers can make it very, very doable for an independent teacher. Right? If you can imagine that you're doing something where you're selling a weekend seminar and you sell the weekend seminar for say $300 and it's an area of your expertise, if you can put 30 people in a room at 300, $300 depending on what your level of expenses are, there's a $9,000 weekend.

And there are all kinds of little niches and little interesting things where you can put 30 people in a room regularly without having the world's biggest brand. And then when it comes to the world of online education, it opens up so much and, and, and the world is hungry for people who do things well.

So here I think online you have in many cases much higher levels of competition where you have to be better, you have to be more skilled. But if you're interested in teaching something and you simply teach it well, you can create a system that will be very powerful over time.

Right? Everything about teaching online rewards high quality and, and, and over time growing monetization. So whether you're teaching English, whether you're teaching some specific skill, the ability to access the world's markets with a very low cost of advertising, focusing primarily on simply your high quality of information makes this one of the world's best times ever to be a teacher because it's a time in which ordinary people who previously wouldn't have been able to reach a global stage without having the right connections can now simply rely upon the strength of their communication skills and the quality of their teaching in order to be found by the marketplace.

So that's my little speech on it, but those are the, when I look at those I see any number of ways that somebody who enjoys being a teacher or wants to be a teacher can analyze his life and can say, here's what I need now, here's what I need in the future and here's how I'll grow it.

So, you know, recently I was watching some videos from a guy who teaches German online. He's a high school German teacher in a little town in the middle of nowhere in the United States. He has his day job, but he also has his online German teaching platform. And so that's just an example where you could take and say, I'm going to have a job, I'm going to have a job that allows me to do my basic day to day work, pays my bills, et cetera, keeps my finances stable, but I'm going to take my 15 hours on the side and I'm going to really invest it into something that has much more leverage than teaching in my local high school.

Yeah, that's a good overview. Thank you. Do you have, or do you want to share the kinds of things that you enjoy teaching about? Sure. Yeah, I really enjoy teaching about leadership, personal growth. I like reading about history and figuring out what lessons on leadership and love and personal growth we can find from it.

And then I also enjoy teaching technical things, my backgrounds in industrial engineering. So things like programming and Python or something like that. I've been getting ready to teach a course in that at my organization. So kind of a mix of soft skills and technical skills. So I think the challenge is if just simply choosing one that you think is the most interesting one for you to start with, any one of those can be turned into an independent business and independent career.

I'm very, very powerfully, but the key is simply choosing one and that you think has the best appeal to you personally. And then thinking through a business model that you think could be effective for you. So, I mean I could take any one of them and create a model for it.

But what I would say is take my, my advice would be make that list of interests and then go and find people who are already doing in your area of interest who are already applying those skills and then see who you admire, see who you would personally want to model in terms of your approach.

I think that makes sense. Cool. Keep in touch. Let me know how things go as it unfolds. Frank, welcome to the show. How can I serve you today? Hi Joshua. I've got two questions today if there's time. First one in, in tithing or giving, how should, how should I balance saving up a giving balance for some future giving opportunity versus supporting currently known charitable organizations that I want to support regularly?

So I think you did a podcast about tithing in the past and you kind of, the words you use were like systematic contributions of support versus like ad hoc financial contributions for others. Right, right. Well, I think you begin with saying who do you want to support? Because if you start by identifying the specific organization or person or people or thing that you're wishing to invest your money into, that's going to give you the idea of what's the best way to invest into them.

When you come to, to supporting an organization that's very, or a person on an ongoing basis, that's very different than supporting just somebody when you see needs on occasion. And you'll probably do both. If you're tithing to your local church, then you're going to want to make sure that you're providing those tithes regularly on an ongoing basis so that the treasurers can make more reliable forecasts as to their cashflow and then manage the money more effectively.

If you're using some of your funds to support someone like a missionary, that missionary will greatly appreciate having a sense of stability in his finances, knowing that, "Hey, I'm receiving $300 a month from this particular donor. That way I can go forward and I can make various investments and financial decisions based upon having that consistent level of money." So I think that those are very valuable.

And if you are, certainly you're going to be giving to an organization that you believe in. So in that case, you want the organization to succeed. And so if you observe the fact that you want that the organization will, will thrive from ongoing contributions, then try to set it up so that you can make ongoing contributions.

The ad hoc giving, I think can be very powerful because there are many needs that are genuine, true needs that are well-served with an ad hoc gift rather than ongoing support. So when it comes to charitable needs for somebody, I'm much more, let's say that I'm, there's somebody that I'm trying to support.

I see a person who's in need. I would, I'm much more excited, generally speaking, about making an ad hoc gift or a few non-scheduled gifts in order to eliminate a sense of dependency by that person. If you're not, if let's say you're just simply helping somebody who lost their job and they need some financial support and you're making a mortgage payment or you're buying some food or you're making just a one-time cash gift, I think that's more powerful because it helps to solve the specific need the person has without the deleterious effects of ongoing support, which can lead to a person becoming complacent, lazy, et cetera.

The kind of the classic example is just look at unemployment. When people get unemployment, when they get laid off from a job, they don't start looking for a job seriously until their unemployment starts to run out. Then they start looking for a job. And so you can take the same benefit of supporting an organization or a missionary or something like that, and it becomes a downside in other giving situations.

So I would just say, look at what you're trying to accomplish and recognize that in general, if you're trying to make a big change, you're probably going to want to prioritize systematic giving and systematic contributions. But that's not to say that you shouldn't also make space for those ad hoc gifts because having the funds available when they're needed can be really, really helpful.

And I think that also the other comment I would make is that sometimes I'm more comfortable giving larger amounts of money when they're not on an ongoing basis. So I might be uncomfortable signing up for a pledge of a certain amount of giving on an ongoing basis. But if I know that I'm just going to give on a one-time basis or on a couple-time basis, I can be more generous because I know that I haven't made a commitment to a person or an organization over time.

Dr. Yeah, that all makes sense. And those are good points. Thank you. Is there time for a second question? Yes, go ahead. Okay. So how can I invest virtuously, especially within like a Roth IRA or 401k? And is blindly investing and index funds, like does that hold some sort of negative moral weight given, you know, the big giant corporations that the monies are invested in?

I mean, from my own kind of understanding of how the stock market works, when you buy a stock, you're buying a share of ownership in the company at a given price in hopes that the value will go up to sell it later. Like at a later date or to receive a dividend, but you're not actually contributing money to the company itself.

Right. So any thoughts on that? Yeah. Well, this is not an easy or a simple topic, but I'll give you a few thoughts that I think are useful when considering it to begin with, what would it mean to invest in a virtuous way? Or I prefer the word righteous to invest in a righteous way.

You would have to have some kind of standard to know if I'm investing my money and it's getting this outcome, then it's I'm investing in a righteous way. My answer as to kind of what it would mean to invest in a righteous way means that people, human beings are being bettered by the activity.

They're the, the, the opportunities, the human beings are improving. The lives of the human beings are improving. The, my basic background for that of course comes from Christian doctrine. And if I reflect and I try to boil down to its most basic form, the, the distinctives of Christian religious teaching, I think that at its core, there needs to be a prioritization of the well-being of people.

So I always go back to the teaching of Jesus. Jesus said, "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where moth and rust do not destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal.

For where your treasure is there your heart will be also." So when I have thought about that over the years, what eventually brought me a place of peace and clarity was when I asked myself, how, how would it be possible to lay up treasures in heaven? How would you actually do that?

And I think that there are a number of answers to it, but my answer comes down to what is in heaven. And if you think about what is in heaven, what is in heaven is of course the person of God, the angels, but most importantly, the souls of men.

That is what is in heaven. And so if I say, how do I lay up treasures in heaven? Then it's going to have something to do with the souls of men. Now frequently, Christians think about that in a very pious, direct religious context, meaning that the goal is to get more souls into heaven.

And I believe that's true and accurate. That's something that we should consider. But I think it makes sense to me to expand it more broadly and to say that I lay up treasures in heaven when I invest into the soul of a man. So let's go and think about Jesus with the teaching of the Good Samaritan.

Here's this guy who is beaten and robbed, left to die on the side of the road. All these people come by, religious leaders go by, they ignore him. But then here comes the Samaritan. And remember, this was a very shocking sermon that Jesus was teaching because the Jews hated Samaritans.

And so here comes the Samaritan. The Samaritan sees a man who is in need and the Samaritan goes over and he loads the man onto his donkey, takes him to an inn and tells the innkeeper, I have to continue my journey, but I will pay for whatever the needs are for you to care for this man.

So did the Samaritan invest and lay up treasures in heaven in that example? Clearly yes. That's why Jesus told the parable. So we could see that something like helping a man who's bleeding and bruised on the side of the road would be a decent way to lay up a treasure in heaven by investing into the well-being, the betterment of this particular human soul.

I think you could expand it out beyond that though. And so anything that winds up improving the lot of people is something that I want to consider investing into. That will in and of itself bring a dividing line. Now I haven't gone yet to the question of profit because some people would say, well, profit is not, you know, we shouldn't do that.

That means that charity is the way that you fulfill what Jesus said to lay up treasures in heaven. You do it with giving money away, but you don't do it with investing by a profit. When I look at the world, I don't see that to be the case. I think that the profit-seeking, a profit-seeking enterprise in many ways is a superior, a morally superior creature, a morally superior system than a not-for-profit enterprise is.

That's not to say that all things should be for profit. I think there clearly are some things that are not for profit. And profit is not per se good. It's not by definition always good. There are many things that we don't do for profit. There are so many things that we don't put out for a bid.

But if you look at the world, many of the problems that we face in the world are solved much more effectively with a profit-seeking institution than they are with a charitable institution. And in fact, the charitable institutions are obvious, are often harmful. For a number of years, I've had planned to do this show, which I haven't gotten around to, basically saying like, don't feel good about yourself by giving to a non-profit or creating a non-for-profit, not-for-profit entity.

Not-for-profit entities are often leeches on society. They are not productive, useful enterprises. They don't have any ability to sustain themselves, and thus they can't grow. And they have to just have this constant flow of funds and donations in order to function. Whereas many times a for-profit company can solve the same problem that a not-for-profit company could.

And instead of it being a leech on society, something that has to be funded on an ongoing basis, it can fund itself. And so you want to see productivity. And in the kingdom of God, productivity is a fundamentally important part. Think of the parable of the steward, meaning the parable of the talents.

You want to see a system produce. If you look at nature itself, nature is wildly productive. And lack of productivity is something not to be appreciated, it's something to be cared for. Jesus cursed the fig tree when it wouldn't produce fruit. So if you look at a problem, let's say you see that there are a lot of people who are being beaten on this certain road, and you see an opportunity to say, "What if I come in here and I start a security company, and let's secure this road and have people pay to protect us?" I would see that as a basic extension of the principle of care for neighbor, of love for neighbor, and of investing into souls.

So I look at the business world, and I see how systematically so many of the basic needs of mankind have been met in the very best ways by investing into them. And so I believe that you can invest into a for-profit company and feel very good about that as long as the products or the services that that company is providing are not harming people.

So now you get into a classic question. Well, how would you know if a product or a service is harming people? There's often been the classic question about companies that create drugs or companies that create alcohol. Is alcohol harming people? Many people don't want to invest into a company that's harming people.

I have a major issue with investing into companies that make their profits off of war. There's a fundamentally evil system of incentives for me to go and for me to invest into Northrop Grumman or Raytheon or one of these companies that makes its profit based upon this giant war machine on a global basis that kills millions and millions and millions of people.

So I have a great deal of difficulty with that. On the other hand, somebody might look at it and see it from the other perspective and say, "Well, these are the machines of war that are in the hands of the good people, and they're the things that are holding things back." So some might be more obvious, some might be less obvious, but then you go into a world and you say, "Well, what about something like, say, Facebook?" Is Facebook a net good on society or is Facebook a net harm on society?

And it becomes much more difficult for you to say as an investor, "For sure." I could argue either side. I could argue that Facebook has been one of the greatest positive influences in society and in the world. On the other hand, I could argue that it's been one of the greatest negative influences on society and on the world.

And the truth is we're usually not competent to judge in the here and now what the actual impact of these companies is going to be. So now back to your question, right? How would you invest the money in your 401(k) in a way that gives you a sense of certainty about that you're investing it righteously?

Well, it's hard. It's almost impossible to do because generally speaking, you're not going to actually know the companies that are being invested into. And in the modern world, unless you are choosing individual companies and you're choosing companies that you believe are a net good on society, in the modern world, you're going to be stuck to a system of mutual funds.

And those mutual funds are either going to be selected by an active manager or they're simply going to reflect what is done in the marketplace, meaning that they're the companies that are listed in the S&P 500 or listed on the stock market. So thus, they're in a total stock market fund.

And that can be difficult. And I don't say that any man is wrong for doing it, but a number of years ago, I looked at it and I just thought like there's just too much here that I'm uncomfortable with. I don't want to invest in this kind of broad scale way.

It doesn't make me feel good to do that. So you would have to judge your own conscience, let your own conscience be your guide and make your choices systematically. What I would say is in general, you're going to wind up in a few different situations if this is a big deal to you.

Number one, you will either have to say, "I'm just going to not worry about it with this money." That's what many people do. "I have my retirement money and I'm not going to worry about it with my retirement money." And many people just invest broadly because their conscience doesn't hurt them.

Or you're going to have to say, "I'm going to choose some individual companies." Because it's not possible for you to stay researched and in tune on thousands of companies. But you could stay tuned in on a handful of companies, companies that you believe are doing good in the world, that are solving problems in the world, etc.

I would submit to you that a company like Walmart is a wonderful company that has systematically solved so many problems on a global basis and helps people to live better because it exists. So I would have no problem owning Walmart stock. You can go through and you can say the other companies that you think are a good example.

But at the end of the day, I always find it interesting that I think more people boycott their purchase decisions way more companies than they boycott with their investment decisions. And I don't understand why they don't take that thinking and just simply choose carefully the companies that they invest in.

I think at the end of the day you'll find it very hard to invest in publicly traded companies that are large and not have some kind of moral component to them. We live in a world where the lines are not clear. The good actors and the bad actors are not clear.

I can look at Walmart and I can say, "Oh, I appreciate all the things that Walmart has done for the good of the world." And another person will come along and say, "Walmart is the biggest worst blight on mankind ever." That's a good argument to make, but people will look at it from different perspectives.

And if you look at many of the largest companies, my biggest issue with a lot of the largest companies is that they use government power and crony capitalism to further their ends. And I consider crony capitalism to be one of the greatest evils of our day. And at its core, something that is damaging to public trust and to upright and righteous living.

They're all involved in that, though, so what do you do? I think that the other answer is you don't have to invest in publicly traded companies. You kind of do if you're going to deal with your Roth IRA, unless you're going to go ahead and do a self-directed Roth IRA.

And of course many people do that. But if you really want to invest for good, you might look at another scale, at a more human scale. So you can look in your local community and say, "Here's a business that would really help my local community. My local community lacks such and such a business.

A gathering place for people or an after-school tutoring program, etc." And just invest your money there. Because then the ethical concerns are closer at hand and you can have a better confidence in what's actually happening or what's not happening. But it's a very difficult set of things to argue through and to think through.

And at the end of the day, I think you're probably going to wind up where most of us wind up, which is a muddy mixture. We would love to be pure. We would love to be ideologically pure. But I don't think that that is really possible in this current environment.

- Right. Yeah, I agree. And again, great points. Lots to think about. Yeah, I guess that's kind of like why I mentioned, as far as my understanding of how the stock market works, even though you might be investing your money with a company, again, from my understanding, it's not like the company is directly profiting from that investment.

It's just you deciding to buy a share of the company, again, in hopes that the value will go up or you receive a dividend from them. - Yeah, I didn't address that directly. Let me address it quickly. You are technically correct that when there is a company whose stock is being traded on a public exchange, when you invest into that company, the company is not directly receiving your money.

Rather, the seller of the stock is receiving your money. You go and you purchase $20 worth of shares. It's the seller of the stock, another individual owner, who is receiving the money, not the company directly. But I don't think that that solves your moral problem because at its core, the market for the stock is being made up of the people buying that company's stock.

And the company that has a strong stock price, that's a major component of the success of the company. The chairman, the board of directors, all of the key executives, they all want and need the company to have a strong stock price in order for their personal compensation to flourish and in order for the company to flourish.

And so the fact that you went out on the independent market and you paid what was asked in order to settle a stock trade is a vote of confidence in that company. And if the demand for a company's share prices went down, that company would undergo significant changes in its plans, in its approach, in its system, etc., until its share price were to recover.

So it is still, even though the money is not directly there, as I see it, it is still a vote for that company when you purchase that company's stock. This is what's so interesting about the modern world, though, is that very few people ever go out and make a direct investment into a company.

We're living in a world where it's not you and me as individuals who are going to make the difference. It's much more a world where it's a small number of investors, they might be activist investors, institutional investors, they can put pressure on a company, and the company is much more focused on not making-- with the general public, they're more focused on not having a bad reputation develop versus being focused on making a splash and attracting individual investors.

The only comment I would close with is simply this. It's very difficult to be ideologically pure, and I think that it's probably something that's best avoided. You don't want to hurt your conscience by being involved in things that you think are wrong, and so that's something that's best avoided.

But we're living in a world that is so complex with so many points of compromise that it's very, very difficult, and I would say almost impossible to be ideologically pure. So I would say at its core, I don't want to be a weasel and back out of personal responsibility with your money.

That's not my goal. But at its core, I think you're better put in a situation where you say, "Where can I actually make a difference?" And I don't think that your Roth IRA with $15,000 in it is going to make a big difference with regard to what you choose to invest it into or choose not to invest it into.

Now, if you've got a portfolio of $30 million that you're managing, and you're going to go out and purchase individual companies, now I think you need to be more careful of that. But there are a lot of people who can-- I'm sitting here, we're doing this call over an iPhone.

An iPhone is made with slave labor in China. So how am I best served? Am I best served by saying that I'm going to avoid buying this iPhone, which is made with slave labor in China and manufactured there, and not only is the company run by a bunch of people that do things that I don't agree with, but the actual products themselves are from a country that is committing genocide against religious minorities?

All that is absolutely true. But what's going to best serve me? I don't want to weasel out and not confront the reality of this device sitting here in my hand. I want to be very clear about it, and I want to be effective. And so we're all going to make compromises.

I choose to make a compromise and say that I'm going to use this device, and I'm going to try to be effective and encourage people to think about righteousness in their living and righteousness in their investing, but I'm aware of the fact that it is a compromise. So you're going to have to let your conscience guide you.

I've just seen people on either extreme, some people who just never pay attention to it, and say, "I'm going to go and make as much money as I can from things that are harming people," which I think is wrong, absolutely wrong. But on the other hand, being a purist, I think can dramatically limit your effectiveness.

So you'll have to find where that line, the appropriate line is for you. We go to 217 Aerial Code. Welcome to the show. How can I serve you today? Hi Joshua, excited to be speaking with you today. I had listened to your show recently. It was back in December, and it really just resonated with me where you had talked about, you know, just creating memories with your children and that they won't need your money when you're 90 and just really being conscious of spending your money when it most counts for your children, and I really appreciated that show.

But I also wanted to kind of pick your brain a little bit, given our current situation, which is we have a little one that may need that money when we're older, and we need some additional support as an adult. So do you think that you would be doing things differently if you were in that situation, and if so, what do you think you would be doing differently?

Absolutely. I think that if you are-- so whenever someone like me is talking about a subject, you need to always try to understand the perspective that I'm talking from, and then ask yourself, "Does this apply to my situation or not?" So with my comments, for example, about don't wait until you're old to give your children money because they're probably old too, I'm talking about a stereotyped situation in which mom and dad pile up all this money, all this money, all this money.

They don't give it to their children. They don't do anything with it, and then they die with millions of dollars in the bank, and the children get it, and great, mom and dad gave us this money, big deal. And my comments are based upon saying, "Hey, this is more effective if you invest it in a different way." You can invest it into your children, in their education.

You invest it into memories. You give it to them at a young age and give them a house when they're 30 rather than when they're 70 and they don't need it. But that doesn't apply to someone like you if you have a child who has special needs. If you have a child who is going to be limited in his or her capacity, then that changes things very, very dramatically.

And now you're in a situation where you're looking at a child and saying, "This child is going to need more substantial help, and so how do I make sure that that help is there?" Now, some things are certainly true, meaning that I sometimes wonder. I would not want to judge somebody.

I would just simply wonder. I sometimes wonder if in our hyper-financialized world we make the same mistake with people who have special needs as we do with people who don't have special needs, meaning that we try to solve certain things with money that are better served in other ways.

And so we try to say, "I'm going to--we first think about setting up a special needs trust before we think about spending all the money now in hopes of finding a solution to the specific problem." I wonder about that, but I think that that's probably not my place to say.

But I would always ask, "Is there a way that you could spend the money?" because a special needs trust is a not very good solution if that same thing--if that same money could be invested in a way that would minimize the particular impact of the need. I also think that sometimes money and financial-- that things are financialized when they shouldn't be.

And so you might say, "Hey, instead of going through a long, complicated legal planning and financial instruments in a special needs trust, let's see if we can build a family culture where we can look out for this particular family member who's going to need extra help, extra needs, etc." And so the human element is, I think, an element that is often under-discussed in financial circles because we are very accustomed to professionalizing everything.

However, that said, I think you still have a duty and an obligation to do the very best that you can towards your child. And if your child needs help, that means I need to support my child now when my child is young, and I need to make the appropriate financial planning moves so that there is support there even into perpetuity, even to make sure that after I'm dead and gone, my child is still taken care of.

So it absolutely does not apply with those caveats. I'm not talking to someone in your situation, and I think that if you have a child who seems like that child is going to need extra support, extra care, extra financial support because of limited capacity in some way, then yes, you owe it to your children to make sure that you engage in that long-term planning.

Great. Thank you. I don't know if that didn't sound offensive in any way. I just really appreciate your outlook on things, and it helps me just kind of see that it is okay to spend some of that money now. It's okay to create those memories now, but I just always have that thought in the back of my head that I just need to continue saving and continue saving.

So it's good to know that you can do both. Right. Yeah, and finding that line, kind of like the previous call, finding the line where you can sleep well at night is probably a very individualized thing. You don't want to--as a parent, right, you're always balancing competing ideas. If you have more than one child, any moment spent with one child is a moment not spent with the other child.

And so trying to find that balance is difficult. I'm really conscious of the fact that it's much easier for us to spend all of our time and attention on our children who misbehave as compared to spending our time and attention on our children who are better behaved. It's so easy to ignore the child who is polite and kind and obedient and spend more time with your problem child instead of rewarding the good behavior in some way.

And so kind of the same challenge comes to money. How much should go into a long-term investment account versus how much should go into creating family memories now? And I don't have the answer to those things other than to say that you will-- just the fact that you are consciously asking the question, thinking about the challenge, et cetera, means that you'll find the appropriate way through it for your family.

- All right, thank you so much. - My pleasure. We go on to Catherine. Catherine, welcome to the show. How can I serve you today? Catherine, you're up. All right, we'll come back to you, Catherine, - and we'll go on to Joseph. - Hello. Joseph, welcome to the show.

How can I serve you today? Hey, this is Joseph. Can you hear me? Sounds good. Go ahead, sir. Yeah, so my wife, Catherine, spoke with you a couple weeks ago about our family dynamics with e-readers and language, and then you did the-- you followed up this week, I guess, on the whole language acquisition topic.

And so my question is-- I'm kind of the tech in the house, and I wanted to better understand your workflow from a digital perspective. You know, downloading this, downloading that, ripping it here, bringing it into there, you know, just kind of the nuts and bolts of that so that I can start a year kind of challenge with our kids and e-reader and input methods.

Okay. Well, I guess we will get a little bit technical here, - but to begin with-- - Yeah, that's the problem. I was like, "Is there any way I can email you - and we can-- - It's okay. It's okay. We'll talk it through. So to begin with, you're a homeschooling family, you're a literature-based family, and I would assume-- and I understand and remember from the previous call that at the moment, most of your children's reading is done on the page, on the written page.

Is that right? - Yes, all of it. - Okay. So I don't think that there's any downside to that, and I don't think that it's technically necessary for you to use an e-reader of some kind in order to have good results. We were pretty hardcore about no devices, and again, I'm not saying that's the best thing.

We just had chosen to be hardcore for a variety of reasons. But when we were going to travel full-time, obviously the challenge of traveling full-time is how many suitcases are you going to dedicate to books? We wound up dedicating a suitcase to books, but we weren't willing to do more than that, and so we decided that it was time to go ahead and start to use a digital reader.

And I think that when we look at modern reading technology straightforwardly, there are actually many benefits to a high-quality e-reader, things that it provides that the written traditional page does not. So what we chose, first of all, is that we didn't want to have-- we wanted a reading device, not a tablet.

We didn't want games. We didn't want colors. We didn't want anything. We didn't want web browsing. We just wanted a reading device. And so thankfully, there's a really wonderful reading device called the Amazon Kindle, the original Kindle, Kindle Paperwhite, et cetera. And these things are awesome. They're fantastic in terms of how effective they are.

I think that that's the natural obvious choice is simply to use an Amazon Kindle. And if you use an Amazon Kindle, you will stay in the Amazon ecosphere. The benefit of that is you have the best selection of any ecosphere out there of books. And so all of the books are available to you.

And that's really, really powerful because depending on what you're trying to get to, the books that you'll put on there will vary. So what we have used it for is at this point in time, virtually all public domain books are available as a Kindle e-book. So you can use public domain books in a really wonderful way.

I also really love that there's tons and tons of bundles and collections that are available on Amazon ready to go. So for example, I mentioned in the conversation with your wife, I mentioned that I've got the original Tom Swift series, right? The classic books written in the early 1900s.

And I paid 99 cents and somebody gave the whole collection. And it's awesome because you can pay 99 cents, you get the whole collection, and it's right there on the book. And all of the old public domain books have been basically put into collections and you can find them and put them on your device.

And that's really, really powerful. But-- - Can I-- - Go ahead. - You mind if I jump in and take it kind of back to the technical piece of it? So I love the idea of having access to the dictionary, you know, or to define the words for vocabulary purposes.

Now, what--so I like that about the Kindle. What I'm hoping to be able to do is find a solution that I can still have that type of screen without all the mess, you know, so I don't have to buy an iPad for this purpose, but be able to use some of the platforms like Hoopla, for instance, is one of the free provided pieces of software that the library has access to.

And we have, you know, tons of titles there. And I was--I'm hoping to find a way to take these different formats that are formatted for specific places and either convert those or break them down into a way that I can bring them into another e-reader if that's possible, you know, like-- so this app, Hoopla, if I was to grab that book and then export it into a form that I could bring it into a Kindle, that would be cool, but I don't know if that's open source enough to do something like that.

- It's not. It won't. So if that's important to you, then the Amazon ecosystem is not gonna be your best bet. Amazon formerly was a little bit more friendly. I have for years purchased Amazon books, Kindle books. I for years was able to get all the digital rights management software stripped off, and I--all the books that I bought, I emptied my entire Amazon Kindle account out, and I keep them all on my computer as independent files outside of the Amazon ecosystem.

You can use a Kindle device to put books onto if you own them, but what you can't do at this point in time is you cannot get the-- at least any way that I have found when I've researched it in the past year, starting about a year ago, I could not get Amazon books and get the DRM off so that I could store them on my actual device.

So if that's important to you, I would encourage you to go away from Amazon Kindle. What you-- - So is there an option? - Yeah. So if that's important to you, I would say that you should look at one of the other devices. So all of the e-readers, most-- at least--I don't know about all of them, but most of them will probably work similarly to the Amazon Kindle, and they'll all work with Hoopla, but you won't have-- I don't think you'll have an easy time getting your Hoopla books out into your personal collection.

That's going to be difficult, and Hoopla works very hard to keep that from happening. I-- - But you're saying I would be able to access them from, like, the Kobo, for instance? - You can access them from any e-reader, yes. So all the e-readers are going to have a plug-in to either OverDrive or Hoopla where you put in your account, and you can borrow them directly from those platforms.

It's just simply if you're trying to get them off of the device and onto your own computer, you're not going to be able to do that from Hoopla very easily. So-- - Okay. So you're saying even the Kindle can access Hoopla? - Absolutely. Absolutely. And what I'd say is that your Kindle-- if you're just going to be reading them from the library, Kindle's going to be your best option because every library platform-- Hoopla, OverDrive, whatever the next one is-- they're going to be fully integrated with the Amazon Kindle, and they have a seamless borrowing system.

So I think that the Kindle is-- the Kindle is the standard, and so it's a really great option for you. - Okay, so then the other piece is the audiobooks-- I mean, yeah, the audiobooks itself that you research and you add to the mix to narrate while you read.

- So once again here, I think the winner is Kindle because Kindle has the WhisperSync integration. So if you own the Audible audiobook from audible.com and you own the Kindle book, then the integration-- you can make the integration of those two things seamless. And the Kindle device, the e-reader device, will read to you from the specific text with a good narrator, et cetera.

And so the strength is on the actual Kindle brand again. So we can get more complicated. Like what I do is I do all of my reading in a totally different system called LingQ, L-I-N-G-Q. That is not something that works on the actual Kindle e-reader. That's an iPad application, iPhone, or computer-based application.

I don't think it's necessary for children, and that's why I didn't recommend it. So I use some different systems. But if you're talking about for children, I think the best thing is either have two devices, have one device that you're going to read the book on and the other device that you're going to use for playing the audiobook, or go ahead and just stick with Amazon Kindle.

I think the strength is really just on sticking with Amazon Kindle as your platform because then you can buy the books that are available. They're not going to-- you can get the version that you want. You can get them synced up with Audible, and you can get the same book on Audible.

It's really probably the best solution to go with. It's annoying because you never own it, right? You're forever renting it. You're paying these fees to-- you pay these fees to Amazon and to Audible, and you have a rental payment for-- a one-time rental payment for something that you can never actually own.

So that's really, really annoying, but it's cheaper than-- it's cheaper than a full-time language tutor. You got to just invest into the actual end result. - Mm-hmm. And then how do you manage them from your-- let's take the children aside because my wife and I, we need to acquire some better language skills before we get to-- I mean, before-- in the process, we need to do that.

So looking at LingQ or something along those lines, do you then just manage all the content from your home server, or what do you-- how do you-- I guess it would be great to see, like, a digital workflow, like, a mind map of your-- - Right. - --of your tech setup-- - It's pretty simple.

- --in a way that-- - Yeah, it's pretty simple. So I keep them separate, totally separate. My children's stuff is not integrated with my stuff in any way. So I have a device, and you may have to have a device that you're going to use, and this is going to be the children's e-reader or this child's e-reader.

The Amazon system has a really good system of parental controls, and with a Kindle device, you're just dealing with reading books. And so they have parents.amazon.com. You go on there. You authorize--you set up an account, a profile for the individual child, and then you just have a system of toggle switches that you can add or add content or take content off of the device very easily based upon what has been purchased in the Amazon account.

So you can just add whatever content you want onto the device very simply. And then similarly with a separate Audible profile if you're using audio books there. And audio books, by the way, same thing. You can get a lot of those from Hoopla. Some of those from Hoopla or Overdrive or your local library system as well.

I think that Link is more than what's necessary for most children. I really love the power of Link. If I were coaching a high school-age student, I would encourage the use of Link. But I think that for young children, it's unnecessarily complicated, and I haven't seen any benefit of trying to use it.

So for me, then what I do is I use Link. Now Link has lots of content, and the whole system of the Link app is something that you can use any digital content that you own, you can upload into it. So you can bring stuff in from webpages, you can bring stuff in from any file that you have on your computer, any book that you have, you can bring it into it.

So what I do is I purchase my e-books from a site that I can eventually strip the DRM off and get either an EPUB file or a text file or whatever it is that I have, and then I just upload my books into Link as standalone books. And depending on what language you're looking for, you can find lots and lots of books that are in the public domain, or you can find lots of books where you can get the full file and you can just load those on as well.

So that's a separate system. Link works really beautifully on an iPad. That's where I usually use it, but I wouldn't go and buy an iPad just for it. They also have a really great web browser system as well, so you can use that for your own reading. Okay, and that was, so where do you find that content from that you're able to-- I'm not willing to-- What language are you going to be studying?

We're starting with Spanish. All right. So with Spanish, I would say one of your best websites would be lelibros.online, L-E-L-I-B-R-O-S dot online. That's a website I always point Spanish speakers to. I don't understand how they have their rights, but they have hundreds of books that are available totally for free.

With no DRM in Spanish, available on that website. And you can find something there that will interest you. For you personally as an adult, they have lots of novels. They have lots of stuff there. And then beyond that, it's kind of a constant hobby is that as a language learner, your number one problem is finding content that is accessible to you and that you're interested in.

That's your number one thing. If you could find the content, everything works, but that's part of the hunt. And so your content is going to be different from your children's content. You just got to go out and find something that you're interested in and get it. So there's lots of stuff available for free online.

If you're the tech guy in the household, you should be good enough at finding the files that you want or you can use one of the solutions and purchase your stuff on a platform that you can hack in some way, apply a software program, etc. to be able to get the DRM stripped off so you can have a DRM-free file that you can upload into LingQ.

But that's the classic challenge that we all face is finding our content that we want. Sure, sure. Okay, so last thing is, let's just say I download some content from Lead Libros and then am I able to bring that straight into a Kobo or which e-reader is the one which I can use to import in that stuff that I pull?

So with that, man, we are getting really technical in the weeds. You weren't lying about we're going to get into it. I'm sorry, man. So I think what you want to use for that is you want to use, the king of the hill here is the software application called Calibre.

C-A-L-I-B-R-E, Calibre. Calibre is a technical, is an open source program that is meant for managing an e-book library. So what you can do is, if you use Calibre, you can have your device and then what Calibre will allow you to do is you can plug your, it'll allow you to organize all of your files in the Calibre software and then you can plug in your device and you can just send files to your e-reader.

And so that'll work with just about any device that you actually want. So that's also a good solution. - Okay. That's super helpful, man. I appreciate it. - Yeah, my pleasure. It's, there's all, the reason I haven't just said, here, do all my things is that I think that you want a straightforward system.

A straightforward system that works is better than kind of a wacky, put together, cobbled together system. I really think the best solution is just an Amazon Kindle and an Audible account. I really think that's your best solution. - Yeah, I hear you, especially for the kids. I'm kind of wacky and I've got a pretty extensive IT, wacky mind.

So I need to piece together things. And yeah, so that was super helpful. I'll figure it out and we'll keep you up to date on this journey. - My pleasure. My pleasure. And in closing, I would say that, like I mentioned to Catherine, I haven't observed any downsides to this particular system and I think that there are upsides to it.

I think that as a bone, for your homeschooling, I think that using the, using a good E-device, an E-reader in your homeschool is I think a powerful, powerful solution. And here are a couple of advantages of it. Number one, if you go through and you look at what's available in the public domain marketplace, there are so many books available that you just cannot get the reprints for.

And every year, more of them come on. For example, like the classic, I'll just use the example I already gave you, Tom Swift. Tom Swift is such a powerful set of books for a child to read. And the original ones written in the early 1900s are fantastic. They have rich language.

They're very well written. The ideas are big. In fact, you can trace all kinds of modern inventions back to the original Tom Swift books. But they are not easy to find. You can't find them. I've bought a lot of old, used books in series, but I can't find them.

And a lot of times when you go and you're trying to search for Tom Swift, you're getting more of the modern reprints, which may not be exactly what you're looking for. And so if you want the originals, the best thing to do is just simply to get them with a classic file.

So for 99 cents that you pay to the guy who put together the collection on Amazon, you have the whole library right there. And it's fantastic to have it. In addition, I think that the e-reader system, Amazon has their, I think they call it WordlyWise. They have a system where many books, they will put in synonyms and dictionary definitions for various words while you're actually reading.

And then you also have the system where you can tap the word, add it to your, look it up in the dictionary. That's powerful. When I was a kid, I hated looking up words in the dictionary, so I never did it. But to the ability to tap the screen when there's a word you don't understand, have a dictionary built in, tells you what that word means, even just in your native language reading, is really, really good.

Really awesome scenario. And then you can have access to a much more interesting set of books that allows your reader sometimes to read based upon interest. For example, I was watching my son, and yesterday he was reading on his Kindle, and I asked him, I was like, "What are you reading?" And he was reading a biography that I have on there of General Grant, Ulysses S.

Grant. And it was one of the books that I had put on him, but I hadn't assigned it to him. But he just got interested in the biography, and I went and checked his reading history, and sure enough, he'd read 90 minutes of this biography of General Grant. And what I have observed, one of the things that I learned from watching it, is that by having a more diverse set of books on there available, that his reading wound up being more diverse.

So instead of just reading the two or three books that he would carry around with him when it was physical books, now he would go more among different genres, change different things, read things that I didn't think he would actually be interested in, but yet he wound up still being interested in them.

So I think it's a benefit and something worth having, rather than a negative thing in any way. - I appreciate that. - Yep, my pleasure. All right, we go on to, well, Catherine was on there, but I think she's, we don't need to talk to her, we talk to Joseph, and we go to 813.

Welcome to the show, how can I serve you today? - Hey Joshua, how are you? - I am well, how are you, sir? - I'm doing well. I had called back, I guess a couple of weeks back, and I'm talking about my daughter, who was two years old, and having problems with the speech.

And I just saw today that the CDC has changed the age limit of 50 words. - I saw that as well. - To 50 by, was it 30 months? And that never really made the news. But I thought that was very, very strange. - I did, and what was interesting is I-- - I wanted to know your opinion on that.

- I heard from a couple of listeners on Twitter after you called into the Friday show saying that they had had a similar experience with their children. - Really? - Yeah, I started to look into it, 'cause as I mentioned to you on that live show, I had kind of, I didn't, I wasn't that skeptical.

I just never really got into the mask debates. I never bothered, I just kind of, I figured, eh, not that big of a deal, et cetera. I didn't get into the mask debates all that much. And so when you were calling in and talking about the impact that it had on your daughter's development, I started reading about it a little bit more.

And especially for young children, I think that absolutely it's harmful to young children. I had never, I just hadn't thought about it previously. And so the idea that children who gain all of their cues from someone's face and they're attracted from a very young age from babies of being attracted to somebody's face, absolutely it makes all the sense in the world that that would be more damaging to children.

And so I was wrong. I just hadn't bothered to dig into it much, 'cause I didn't have any reason to. But now I definitely see that, yes, it is an impact. And so I saw that story this morning of the CDC changing. And so for context, previously the CDC had said as a normal benchmark, your child by the age of 24 months should be able to produce about 50 words by the age of 24 months.

But the argument is that they've now changed it and instead of it being 24 months, they've said by 30 months, your child should be able to produce about 50 words. And so the argument is this is something that they're just changing the rules. Now, I'm still, I'm personally a little skeptical that that's all there is, right?

I don't know without actually going back and doing some deep investigation into the CDC's recommendations and where did this chart come from, et cetera. But I definitely know that masks for children are a bad deal or a bad idea in every way. So I'm sold on that. I don't need to know any more than that.

(laughing) - The reason for my call today was, I had listened to your show yesterday about, was it yesterday or the day before, about the Canadian-- - Finance system. - Limit on banks. And what's the easiest solution you found to do an offshore account? - Are you, where do you live?

Are you American? - Yes. - Okay, so the easiest solution for Americans is Canada. And obviously I'm fully aware of how ironic that is. To recommend a Canadian bank account in light of what I said. But the answer for Canadians, the easiest solution is the United States. And for Americans, the answer is Canada.

I don't expect, I think that the Canadian debacle is a very good example of how they will change the rules. And everything that I said. But I don't think that that is in and of itself says that why on a widespread basis, Canada is not a reasonable solution for people who want to open an offshore bank account.

And for Americans, definitely Canada is the simplest and most accessible option. Which gives me kind of a layup to address something that a listener mentioned earlier today, also in response to that show. When you look at an offshore bank account, you have to ask yourself the question, why am I actually opening this account?

What am I trying to get out of it? And there are some things that are just off the table. For example, I don't try to talk to people about opening a bank account for privacy reasons. Or at least privacy from government actors. The US government knows about all of my offshore bank accounts because every single year I file a form and I tell them exactly where all of my bank accounts are.

So there's no privacy from the government. There's no tax savings. We're not engaging in tax fraud or tax evasion. That world is dead and gone. There was a time 30 years ago where you could probably get away with it. You could go and you could open an offshore account.

You could have gains in that account. You could not report those gains and you could get away with it. But those days I think are dead and gone. So that's not the reason. My answer as to why should someone have an offshore bank account is a few things. Number one, I think the most sensible thing is to recognize that there are certain threats that you face that are national in scope.

So a threat like, hey, the government is saying that if I have a GoFundMe or a GiveSendGo contribution in my bank account to the trucker convoy, they're going to shut me down. What is happening in Canada is that bad. It is just that bad that if you made a contribution via GoFundMe or GiveSendGo to the trucker convoy, then they can come in and they can say, oh, we're going to freeze your account.

I don't think that they will do that because although I don't think that the people who are involved actually have any moral qualms about being tyrants, they love it. They love controlling people's lives. They don't have any moral qualms about being tyrants. But there is still a culture that would push back more if they affect too many people.

So the way that what they do is they pick on a few people. And as long as you can get just a few people, most people will never lift their hands to defend a small minority of people. It's just not worth their time. They're not going to get into it.

So I don't think that they're going to shut down everyone who made a GiveSendGo contribution, but they could. I don't think that banks are going to go and try to shut down all those accounts, but they could. And so my point was they could, they can, and they do it really, really fast.

So if you have an account that's outside of the jurisdiction that you're living in every day, that account is harder to regulate than an account that's inside the jurisdiction. Canadian banks are very, very heavily regulated by the Canadian government. And so they will not do anything that could interrupt their profit flow.

They're not going to stand up and try to defy the government in any way. They're going to do whatever the government says. Now, if your money as a Canadian is just simply in Bank of America, if you're a big enough target, then the Canadian government can get to you, right?

They can go to the US government. They can open up a line of international diplomatic communication. They can make an argument as to why your funds in the United States should be frozen. And if you're a big target, then they can win. They will win that particular opportunity. But what they won't be able to do is just do a widespread sweeping command like they can do in Canada.

And so the same thing for the United States, right? The United States is vastly bigger than Canada, a country of 10 times as many people, and although not geographically bigger, 10 times as many people, so much more complex society. But the same thing has for the United States, that if you have $5,000 in a Canadian bank account, then you can know that, "Hey, at least I've got a little bit of money that's not subject to the same scrutiny or the same easy access as if it is all in the United States." Usually, this is not a problem, right?

Because usually there's a system of court checks and balances. In the United States, you have much more, evidently, much more rigorous protection of your money than in Canada, because you have to get an actual court order, you have to go through the process with judicial oversight. That's what was so awful about what the Canadian government did is that for bouncy councils and trucks in the street, they swept their hands and they waived all of that.

They used what was formerly the War Measures Act over this minor domestic disturbance. So to my point is, I see an account like that as primarily functioning. Yes, maybe it's your $5,000 of money that's in another place, but primarily it's a safety valve. And the way I've talked about it is that, let's say that something happens and you decide, "I want to get my money out of U.S.

dollars." Well, the fact that you already have the Canadian account established allows you to make a transfer of your real assets later down the road. And you can move your $100,000 savings account into Canada, get into Canadian dollars, etc. My big fear is not a political protest. My fear is currency controls.

Because what happens is they always implement currency controls when they run into a crisis of some kind. And so I don't want my money stuck behind a system of currency controls where they can just destroy the value of the money. But now that's different than if you really have more significant assets that you want to move offshore.

And so I think that there are very good reasons for you to move significant assets offshore. But then I wouldn't recommend Canada as a first step. If you've got a million dollars, you don't go to Canada. You go to Switzerland or you go to Singapore. You don't go to Canada.

And I do think that, obviously, the benefit of Canada for Americans, in conclusion, is simply it works just like what you're accustomed to. And so you drive to Canada. That's a big hurdle for many people, is to go somewhere they can drive. They speak the language that you speak every day.

Everything looks and works and functions just like you're used to. It's a little different in Mexico. I don't like Mexico at all as a banking destination. So my answer is Canada. That's why. Even with all of these issues. Now, it shouldn't stop in Canada. And I wouldn't put major money in Canada, although you could.

But I think that if you're dealing with major money, with an actual sizable account, then it's much more in your best interest to go to a more robust banking jurisdiction than Canada. Okay. I appreciate that. And if you've got time for one more, that'd be awesome. Sure, go ahead.

And moving some cash into commodities. Gold, silver. Right now. What would you say a percentage wise of, of, of cash. Should be put into. Into some alternative other than cash. Out of inflationary concerns. Yeah. That's hard. Because I think that. So. That's a hard, hard question to answer. Because the answer is going to commit you to a prediction of what you think is actually going to happen.

So if you thought, if you were sure that there was going to be 1000% inflation of your currency, and your currency is the US dollar, then you would, of course, the answer would be, I would like to move as close to 100% out of cash as possible. Right. That would be, that would be sensible.

But you're not sure that there's going to be 1000% inflation. And I would say it's exceedingly unlikely that there would be any, you know, 1000% inflation. Notwithstanding the last month's figures of 7.5% inflation. Inflation is significant right now. But I don't, I don't, I don't believe that the US dollar, I don't believe that the US dollar is going to turn into a hyperinflation currency.

I could be wrong. I hope I'm not wrong. But I could be wrong. And I have a plan for it. But what I would say is your first solution would not be to say what percentage of my cash would go from cash to commodities. But rather to say what percentage of my cash should go from cash to a better run currency.

And so I think that if you're genuinely concerned about inflation, that you're probably better off to think about what percentage of your cash reserves you want held in a competing currency. And so you can hold Canadian dollars, you can hold Swiss francs, you could hold Singapore dollars, you could hold pounds, you could hold euros.

Any of those are good solutions. You're exposed to some risk of international currency fluctuation risks. But I think that's a more sensible way for you to protect against inflation than just buying commodities. My answer on the commodities question is more a matter of net worth rather than percentage of cash.

And so I think that if you have somewhere 5% of your net worth in commodities, I think that that's probably a pretty good number. Maybe as high as 10%. Somewhere in that 5% to 10% range seems pretty good. And so I would look at it in terms of net worth.

And then I would also say, is this going to be the best, most productive commodity for me to purchase? So if you're trying to say a percentage of cash, I think your first answer is let's put some into a competing currency. Swiss francs, wonderful, right? Again, Canadian dollars, Australian dollars, New Zealand dollars, Singapore dollars, any of those are fine.

And then answer the commodities question based upon a net worth question, not a percentage of cash. Okay. I appreciate that. Thank you so much. And I don't like to be – sometimes I wonder if I've gotten too wait and see. I just – No, not at all. I don't – when I was younger, I was prone towards kind of catastrophism, thinking, oh, it's all going to happen so fast.

But I don't think that's the case. And so – and then I guess the other thing that has really affected me is having watched and studied carefully. I've studied several, like, serious hyperinflations and watched very carefully over the last few years with what's happened in Venezuela. That I think that the answers are usually not gold coins.

I think that the answer is a competing currency. And a competing currency – and the best thing is simply a currency that you can get into if you decide that that's right for the bulk of your assets. So I think the first thing is have an offshore bank account that will allow you to hold foreign currency and U.S.

dollars. Then you can move your U.S. dollars out of the United States into a U.S. dollar account abroad. That should help you to bypass currency controls if or when they were actually imposed. And then the ability to take that money and go quickly into another foreign currency I think is sufficient.

Because hyperinflation – inflation itself and hyperinflation is not necessarily contagious. You had high inflation rates in Canada recently reported and the United States. But I think that's due to the same underlying causes. And for my cash I'd rather own Swiss francs than a bunch of gold. Yes. Okay. Awesome.

That's it. Anything else? That's it. Good. Good stuff. My pleasure. And Catherine, are you there? I didn't want to cut you short if you had your own question earlier. I tried to go to you and then evidently I think I spoke to your husband. Are you there, Catherine? Does that happen to be me?

I guess it is because you don't sound like a Catherine. No. Okay. That's all good. I just wanted to make sure. So that concludes – I finished all of the phone lines. That is it for today's Q&A call. Thank you all for the great questions. I've enjoyed them. As you can see, I'll take it even if we get into the technical question of what e-reader platform and the details of international currency transfers, et cetera.

Thank you all so much for listening. I really appreciate it. Remember that if you would like to join me on next week's Friday Q&A show, you can do that by going to patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance. In addition, if you'd like to book a private personal consultation with me, I'd be happy to provide that service.

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