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Workout and perk out with the PF Black Card. Join today for zero enrollment and $24.99 a month. See Home Club for details. Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now, while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.

My name is Josh Rasheeds. I'm your host. Today on the show, I want to talk about belief. The power of believing in the possibilities of what is actually in front of you. I've been thinking this morning about the war in Ukraine right now between Russia and Ukraine. For context, today is Thursday, February 24, 2022.

In the last 12 to 18 hours, there has been a dramatic change in the relationship between Russia and Ukraine. The conflict has now gone kinetic. It's hard for me to understand fully at the moment in the fog of war what's actually happening, but there are abundant reports of Russian attacks on Ukraine.

There's plenty of evidence of incursions of Russian tanks, troop carriers, et cetera, across the border. There's a massive breakdown in international relations. Ukraine has closed its embassy in Moscow, cut off diplomatic relations with Russia. Around the world, many nation states are issuing strong condemnations of the actions of Russia, et cetera.

Clearly, we have entered a new phase of this particular conflict. This is something that's actually come up on Radical Personal Finance in the past few weeks, which I'll be talking about in a moment, where we had a listener call in and said, "Hey, my parents are in Ukraine. What should we do?

Should we get them out? Should we not?" We'll be talking about this. But as I consider the topic and what I wanted to say about the topic, I believe it's a useful learning point for us. And I don't have any insight or wish to make any commentary on the actual details on the ground.

It's unknown. I want to always condemn violence, immoral violence. I always want to condemn immoral violence. I always want to stand for peace and for righteousness. And so that should be the first thing, of course. But beyond that, I don't have any insight. And so I'm not going to make any commentary on Russia or Ukraine or anything.

I don't understand the history. I don't understand that region of the world. I don't understand. And that lack of understanding goes deep. Two in passing, it's interesting, two things that have troubled me for years. About a decade ago, I started to take some interest in the Soviet Union and the history of the Soviet Union.

Because, of course, I had what I was taught in school as history. And I grew up, when I was a young boy, I grew up and I took an interest in political thrillers, primarily Tom Clancy political thrillers. And a key part of the story arc of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan series involved the conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States.

Of course, that was the defining feature of that age in American politics and American international relationships, was the conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States. And a bunch of Clancy's thrillers were set in that age of conflict. Of course, there's the famous Hunt for Red October. But then he had many lesser known books, such as The Cardinal, The Kremlin, and others that were situated in the Soviet Union.

And so, of course, I had kind of the standard American viewpoint of that, reinforced by what I learned in school. And then, probably 10 to 15 years ago, I don't remember exactly, I started, I came across the research of Anthony Sutton on the technological influences in the Soviet Union.

And Sutton was a, I think, a professor who was very, who did a very detailed analysis of what technology was in the Soviet Union. And it opened my eyes to the revisionist history that many people had argued with regard to the Soviet Union. It left me very confused. I thought, how on earth is it the case that there's all this hard evidence for the American investment in the Soviet Union, the building up of the Soviet Union?

And yet, this is not, I don't understand how this could be the case, because this doesn't fit the standard history that I was taught. And so I've had an interest in that for years, but never pursued it to a point of trying to actually have an opinion on it.

Second thing that happened was actually the YouTube algorithm started to affect me, I guess, a couple year or two ago. I stumbled across some videos of President Putin of Russia. And I started watching videos of his speeches, some interviews, etc. And some of them were quite, some of them were just public speeches, some of them were interviews, some of them were aggressive, confrontational interviews.

And of course, when you start watching something on YouTube, then of course, there's up next. And you train the algorithm, the algorithm sees you're interested in this, and you watch these videos. And I kept watching them. And I've watched a couple dozen videos, some fairly long of President Putin in various public contexts.

And I came away saying, that is not a stupid man, whatever he is, he may be evil, may not be evil, I don't know. But that is not a stupid man. And it was interesting, because I came away with a very different impression of him from actually watching just the way that he dealt with public events than I had from absorbing the American news media.

I read mainstream American news media regularly, on an almost daily basis, read the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, etc. And you get this certain impression of the world based upon reading mainstream news. And that impression doesn't hold up to my understanding of just trying to watch direct from the source.

So forgive the sideline, just all that to say that I don't understand what's going on, and so I don't want to comment on that. I don't want to comment on what is actually happening, etc. until more information becomes clear, except to the point that I want to condemn violence, and those who perpetuate violence.

Violence doesn't solve anything. Or at least, it very rarely solves anything. But there's a long history there that is very difficult to understand for me. What is not difficult to understand is that the lives of Russians and Ukrainians have been dramatically affected in the last 12 to 24 hours.

And it's the lives of all Russians and all Ukrainians. Secondly, there is the risks and the fears of violence. Obviously the Ukrainian people all across the country are now facing risks of violence that they weren't facing a couple of months ago. You have air raid sirens going off in major cities, you have shelling coming in, you have tanks driving down the street.

These are major, major changes in life. At this point in time, although of course I'm sure that the Russian desire is not to kill thousands and thousands of ordinary civilians, that would seem to me from my limited understanding quite counterproductive for them, the fact is that when violence happens, the results are often uncontainable.

When a gun goes off, a bullet lands somewhere. And sometimes that bullet lands in the intended target, sometimes it passes through the intended target and hits someone behind, sometimes it goes crazy, flies up in the air, falls down and kills a random kid. There was a horrible story the last couple of days, the five-year-old shot in, I think it was Detroit, I think.

So the point is that any time you have violence, there's always unintended consequences, there's always collateral damage. And so regardless of what a military tries to do or tries not to do, it's a dangerous place to be. So the life of every Ukrainian in Ukraine is now affected just simply by that increasing risk.

What will happen is in a time of war and violence, the risks across the board go up. You have always primary effects, secondary effects, tertiary effects. You have the primary risk of a shell coming in, a warplane going over, a tank lobbing off some kind of explosive round, people being killed, people being shot.

Then you have the secondary risk that now local criminals will have more freedom to engage in higher levels of crime. So you have your more standard criminals that use the cover of violence to engage in other levels of crime. Then you have, of course, all the secondary and tertiary effects of disruptions in markets, disruptions in goods.

Right now the international airport is shut down. Across the country, international airports are shut down. So of course, there's nobody coming in, there's nobody going out, there's no tourists coming in, no tourists going out. There'll be blockades of supply lines. The grocery store shelves will start to run short.

Prices will skyrocket on certain goods that are hard to get. There'll be shortages across the board. And so everyone in Ukraine is going to be feeling the effects. However far it goes, whatever ends up happening, the effects are going to last and be very, very significant for a significant period of time.

And then everybody in Russia or everybody associated with Russia in any way is going to be affected. They're going to have significant international sanctions, most of them being economic sanctions being levied against the Russian people. We'll see what the long-term impact of those sanctions is, but they will be heavy on anybody associated with Russia.

Businesses in Russia are being sanctioned. Businesses doing business with Russia are being sanctioned. If you're running a company in the United States but you have Russian clients, that will come under heavy problems. Russians' ability to convert money, to transfer money, people are arguing cut them off of the swift banking system.

Russian banks will undergo greater scrutiny. You're stuck, right? It's a major problem. So you could be Russian, living in Russia or not living in Russia, and now at this point in time, because of the actions of the Russian government and the Russian military, there will now be major, major effects that will be felt by you.

Now what do I talk about belief? The point is, I didn't think a few weeks ago, I didn't think it was likely that President Putin would actually invade Ukraine. The topic came up on a Friday Q&A show and I had been reading some of the news reports, but I have a very hard time reading and believing anything that I read in the news reports about things like that.

Sometimes they get it right, sometimes they don't, but the Western media is so wacky in terms of the things that they report, I believe very little of it. And you look at it and you say, "What does a country like Russia have to gain by invading Ukraine?" It seems to me how, based upon my understanding of the conflict, the cultural differences, the nationalism of the Ukrainian people, the nationalism of the Russian people, obviously there are close, close connections and ties, culturally speaking, but it just seemed to me like you can't, it seems, I don't understand how a nation can militarily pacify another nation.

And so we'll see how far Putin goes and what happens, we'll see what his game plan is, but in the modern age it has seemed, I don't understand how it can be smart, a smart thing to do. But time will tell, history will give the verdict. In a couple decades we'll have a greater understanding of what the impact of the actions today are or are not.

But what I have done, I didn't think it would happen, but I have always believed that it could happen. And so if you think back to the Friday Q&A shows where I had a listener with Ukrainian roots calling in and saying, "Should I get my parents out?" My answer was, "Absolutely, get your parents out." And we talked through some of the details, but I said, "If you think that it's a possibility, the consequences of not getting out are simply too high." And so I hope very much that that listener got his parents out, I hope that they went to the United States and that they're safe in the United States at the moment.

The consequences of being, there are certain things where the price is so high and the consequences are so high that regardless of whether you know what will happen, regardless of whether you're sure of what will happen, you must take action just in case something does happen. And you must take action early and put a plan in place.

Again, that plan can have certain triggering points. I always think about this in the context in my line of work as a financial planner of what's called a springing trust. In financial planning, you can build in a trust certain springs, things that if this, then that, a trip wire, so to speak, or a conditional clause, right?

If this happens, then that happens. And so in asset protection planning, there's a really interesting design that I think is quite smart when it comes to domestic asset protection trusts and offshore asset protection trusts. And the basic idea is whenever you do offshore planning, the prices go up, the hassle goes up, the costs go up.

And so a lot of times, you're better off keeping your assets in the local area, in the domestic economy, because prices are lower, hassle is lower, you can, it's just an easier, it's easier to do business. It's quite complicated and frustrating to do business offshore, whether that's an offshore company, whether that's an offshore trust, et cetera.

And there are higher costs associated with those things. But you recognize, especially in things like asset protection planning, you recognize that there are certain things that could happen, that if they happen, that might make this line of planning no longer doable. So you can build a trust where the trust is managed in the United States, if you're from the United States, its assets are mostly in the United States.

That keeps your costs low, keeps things simple, et cetera. But then you put certain springs in there, where if this happens, if the threat goes up, then the trust, the trustee has the direction to immediately move the trust from the United States to an offshore jurisdiction. And then in the offshore jurisdiction, the trust has greater protection from the attacks that it is receiving.

And so it's called a springing trust, it can spring, something happens. And there are other uses of springing trust in other contexts as well. But I love that picture, I love that image of simply we have a plan, but then if things get bad, then it springs into another plan.

Because that's a good way of dealing with reality. Reality is, I don't want my trust to go offshore, it's a hassle. But I recognize that there are attacks that can come, and that would be, those attacks would be significant. The same thing applies to where you are, right? If you're living in Ukraine, and you're happy in Ukraine, that's where your life is, that's where your friends are, that's where your business is, that's where everything is, then you would obviously want to stay there.

That Ukrainian person doesn't want to move to Hawaii, doesn't want to move to Latvia, doesn't want to move to Finland or to the United Kingdom. The Ukrainian person wants to be in Ukraine. But you have to acknowledge there are certain things that could happen that could change that. So I put in place a plan to say, if this happens, then I'm going to take these certain actions.

And I think war is a really good example of this. This is one of the reasons why years ago when I left the United States the first time, I said, I need to have a plan to where I could go if I wanted to leave the United States in the future.

It's not that I want to leave forever, but if I wanted to leave in the future because things got bad, what would I do? What would I do if the tyranny increased? What would I do if there broke out increasing levels of violence due to structural instability and social instability, et cetera?

I need a plan. I need a plan that could spring into action. But in order to develop the plan, you have to believe it. And then in order to actually take action, you have to believe that something is possible. And this is what happens, is that very few of us actually believe that the bad things that could happen to us are possible.

Think about a heart attack, right? You're 40 years old. You're stuffing your face every day with junk food. You are sedentary, et cetera. You know intellectually that something could happen and your heart could get clogged and you could have a heart attack and die. Heart disease kills millions and millions of people.

You know that it could happen, but you don't believe it. You don't believe it. And so we don't start doing the things that we need to do to avoid that kind of outcome. You know that you could get in a car accident today and die. You know that your family could be left fatherless, motherless, penniless, but yet you don't believe it enough to go and increase your life insurance.

You don't believe it. You know that war could bring significant disruptions and gasoline could go from $3 a gallon to $6 a gallon basically overnight, but you don't believe it enough to prepare, enough to stockpile gasoline, stockpile money, make a plan of what you would do if you had to reallocate your budget.

You know that things could happen and grocery shelves could go bare. You know that supply lines could be disrupted, but you don't believe it enough to say, "Oh, here's what I would definitely need, so I'll make sure that I have in place some preparations." And when something like this happens, right, I didn't—we don't believe that a nation could go to war with another nation to take territory.

We ignore the fact that throughout all of human history, this is what people have done. This is what governments have done. It doesn't matter whether it's Genghis Khan or Napoleon or Germany and Hitler, Hitler's Germany, or whether it's Putin's Russia or whether it's the United States. It doesn't matter.

We don't—we ignore the fact that this is the way that it has been throughout all human history. And you go through a period of time, right? You go through—let's see, when did the Soviet Union collapse? Let's call it almost 30 years. You go through a 30-year period and you say, "Oh, we're in a new world order.

The world is totally different." And then something happens and it should wake you up and you say, "Oh, you know what? Something could happen." So when you come across a risk, when you come across something that is happening, that could happen, believe that it's possible. Right? When I did a show last week on Canada about the Canadian government freezing bank accounts, which thankfully seems to be coming to an end.

Right now, yesterday, amazingly, before the Senate in Canada actually voted on the act, Prime Minister Trudeau ended the Emergency Measures Act. So with the ending of the Emergency Measures Act, hopefully the freezing and whatnot is coming to an end. I saw several reports of people who had their accounts frozen that they were unfrozen again.

We'll see what happens. But something like that happens and you say, "Ah, I don't believe it could happen here." But you've got to believe it. You've got to recognize, "Hey, that happened once. If it happened once, it's going to happen again." Right? I did a show this week. I didn't release it because I've decided to sit on it for a couple days and I'm going to release it as part of promoting a new course that I'm almost ready to release.

But I did a show on Executive Order 1602 in the United States back in 1934 when President Roosevelt in the United States banned the private ownership of gold coins, gold bullion and gold certificates. For 41 years in the United States, it was illegal from 1943 to 1974, it was illegal in the United States for an individual citizen to own gold coins, gold bullion or gold certificates more than I think five ounces.

We look at that and say, "Oh, that's ancient history. They would never ban gold coins again." I think it's unlikely they ban gold coins again because at the time gold was very pervasive. But we say, "Oh no, they'll never ban bitcoin." Then we ignore the fact that many of the big countries around the world have tried to ban bitcoin.

Russia just this week I think came out with a proposal that said that if you're going to have bitcoin, you have to have it in a custodian wallet. You can't store it yourself in cold storage. It has to be with a custodian, right? So they can manipulate them. Same thing you see happening in Canada right now.

Canada can control and affect the use of bitcoin for any bitcoin that is held in a wallet with a custodian because they can impose military power over the custodians, but they can't over cold storage. So you look at it and you say, "I don't believe it." Well, my course coming out is about bitcoin is a collaboration I'm doing.

It's going to be that you need to prepare for the fact that your government says you can't own bitcoin. Now do I think that they'll do that? I sure hope not. They'd be stupid to do it, but they've done it before and all you need to do is look at history and recognize they've done this again and again and again from 1934 to 1973 to 1974 I think it was.

It was illegal for you to own a gold coin. So why would they not make it illegal for you to own bitcoin? Why would they not? Throughout human history, countries have invaded other countries. Why would they not do it again? Throughout history, civil wars have broken out all over the planet.

Why would they not break out again? Throughout history there has been chaos. The normal pattern of history is chaos and disorder, violence and conflict. So when you have a period of peaceful prosperity you have to look and say, "What created that? What created peace? What created harmony? What created unity?" Because that's not the norm.

But in our modern age, many of us come to think that's the norm. Now belief is not only on the negative side. The same argument can be made on the positive side. If you're going to go and start a business you have to believe that success is possible. If you're going to enter into a marriage you have to believe that your marriage can be full of love and happy and for life.

You have to believe that outcomes are possible. I'm of course just kind of in a negative mood thinking about the examples in Ukraine today. But you have to believe it and then say, "If that did happen what would I want to have in place?" Remember that it's all in your head.

There's not a cost to believing something. There does come certain costs to preparing for certain things. Preparedness has certain costs. But those costs are usually lower than what people actually think. The cost of preparing for, "Hey, what would I do if my country went to war?" is actually pretty low in terms of a most basic plan.

I have another course that I'm going to be releasing in the next couple of weeks on kind of a springing plan. How do you put in place a plan with certain levels? But at its core it's just a matter of, right, our Ukrainian listener on the Q&A show, at its core it's a matter of, "Hey, I was going to go this summer and visit my children in the United States.

I'm just going to go now and spend a few months there. And they can always start any kind of residency process that I need later. But let's just go now. Why not? Let's go for a few months. There's no reason why we can't. Not holding down a job, not holding down a business.

Let's just go now." The cost is relatively low is the point. So when you hear of things happening in the world, believe that they can happen to you. You hear of a volcano blowing up, if you live near volcanoes don't look at your volcano and say, "Oh, my volcano is dormant." Say, "Hey, those people's volcano was dormant for a long time and then it wasn't.

What would I do if my volcano became less dormant?" You see of hurricanes going through other places and you live in a place where you get hurricanes, then say, "Hey, what if a hurricane came through here? What would I do? What would I do if there were political unrest?

What would I do if crime were going up in my neighborhood?" And believe that it's possible where you live. You'll just simply believe it. Train yourself to believe that it's possible. It'll put you far ahead of the people that put their head in the sand and ignore what's happening.

Believe that it's possible. And look at history as your guide. A lot of things have happened in the past and then they happen and we say, "Oh, this can't happen." But yet somebody who looked at history realized that it happened again and again and again and again and again.

Wars have happened again and again and again and again in human history. Dictatorships have happened again and again and again and again. Believe that it's possible and then make a plan for what you would do if it happened again. Let's be diligent to pray for and support all of those in this new area of conflict.

Pray that peace would prevail. Pray that God would arrest the hearts of dictators, of people committed to war and violence, and turn them from their wicked and evil ways. And yet, let's also learn from the lessons that we see happening right now. Hey, parents. Join the LA Kings on Saturday, November 25th for an unforgettable Kids Day presented by Pear Deck, family fun, giveaways, and exciting Kings hockey awaits.

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