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My name is Josh Rasheeds, I'm your host, and today is Friday, February 17, 2023. Though you might not know it due to the absence of music, today is Friday Q&A. Apologies, I went to start everything just before the show and it has disappeared from the places where it was supposed to be and I don't have the backup systems at my fingertips.

So if you're new to the show, welcome each and every Friday here at Radical Personal Finance when I can arrange the appropriate technology. We do a live Q&A show, works just like call-in talk radio. You call in, talk about anything that you want, ask me any questions that you want, opine on anything that you want.

You set the course of the call. And so I do that each and every Friday when I can arrange the appropriate recording setup. If you would like to gain access to one of these Friday Q&A shows, you can do that by becoming a patron of the show. Go to patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance, patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance, and that will gain you access to one of these shows.

We begin with Annette in North Carolina. Annette, welcome. How can I serve you today? Hi, Joshua. I have a question for you. I am starting a third grade reading literacy website for my county, and I wanted to know what three things would you have on the website and why?

I would... I love the question. A specific question creates great answers. So number one thing I would have on the website is I would have a... some compelling way to demonstrate... So first, a couple of questions. Who are you hoping will be looking at your website? Okay, so let me give you a back...

I am not a reading specialist. I'm a math major, but I am concerned about reading. My county is like 17 points behind the state, and African-American students are at the bottom. And so I went to people to try to get some help. Nobody was interested, so I went to school to learn how to code, and I have gathered some resources.

I bought that book that you mentioned in the... I think it was the read-along. And so I'm just trying to... I'm trying to gather resources. This is just a first start at this, just putting resources that we have in the county already. And so I'm looking towards parents to begin with and maybe the children, the students.

Right. So the first most important thing, I think, is to persuade people of the value of reading. If you hear how I try to talk about it, I try to demonstrate a little bit of the clear and obvious research that exists... Excuse me, on how incredibly influential reading is on all of the metrics that we care about.

Reading helps to improve academic outcomes substantially. Reading improves empathy. Reading helps children to be more successful. Reading is the corner... It is the cornerstone thing. In the Read Aloud Handbook, Jim Trelease, the author, which is the book that I think you're referring to, Jim Trelease talks about it and he says, "If somebody created a pill that would deliver all of the academic benefits of reading, there would be a line for miles and miles around." It is the single most important thing that can happen.

It can help children to improve their test scores, academics across the board. And so I think the first thing is just to demonstrate a little bit of the research to inspire people that this is fundamentally the thing that can alter the course of someone's life. The second thing that I think is important is to emphasize the value of reading aloud.

And so I would focus... I didn't talk much... In the episodes that have been publicly released, I haven't talked about audiobooks. But I think the best gateway drug, especially for poor families, for families where parents are working, etc., the gateway drug that you want to get kids hooked on is audiobooks.

I see that as the key thing. Because if somebody listens to lots of stories read aloud, that person is far more likely to eventually become a skilled and fluent reader with his eyes if he's had lots of stories read aloud. So obviously we want to get moms and dads and grandmas and grandpas and neighbors, etc., reading stories aloud themselves, pulling out books and showing people and reading to them in person.

But given that that can be challenging, I think our gateway drug is audiobooks. And audiobooks, carefully selected and chosen, are just wonderful, and children respond to them. So I would focus on trying to get people to be aware of the audiobooks that are available to them, perhaps the ones that are there in your local library system.

I would speak with the local librarian about the audiobooks that they have, and I would make sure you choose some good quality audiobooks that have rich, beautiful stories, that are high-quality children's literature, etc., and focus on audiobooks. And then the third thing I would say, if I had to just choose three, every bit of academic research that I have seen on this indicates that it doesn't matter what children read, it matters that they read.

So what I mean is I would encourage parents not to try to guide children's reading too much, too proactively. If you look at people who are readers as adults, they generally become readers because at some point along the way they got hooked on a book or a series of books or a genre or something that they really loved.

For me as a reader, I remember when I was a boy, it was Hardy Boys. When I discovered the Hardy Boys books and I discovered all of the incredible adventures that my heroes Frank and Joe Hardy could have, it opened up the world to me, and I read dozens and dozens of those books.

For some people it's Babysitter's Club or it's Goosebumps or it's Harry Potter or it's something that grabs them. And so I think that there's a danger that people try too hard to direct the reading choices of children. Now obviously we want to protect children from things that are harmful, but the risk of them coming across something that's harmful is very low compared to the risk of them not coming across anything at all.

And so it's really important that we surround children with books and that they have the opportunity to choose the books that appeal to them without our interference. The sustained free reading is the key factor where the child chooses the book that he's interested in for whatever reasons he's interested in and is just given time to read it.

And so I would work to just make sure parents and school administrators and teachers and whatnot don't try too hard to direct the children. Don't try in the early years too hard to direct the children to high-quality literature or highbrow literature or quality, et cetera. Just give free reign.

And then once you see that you've got a reader and you've got a reader who's addicted, then go ahead and start giving that reader advice and recommendations. Those would be kind of what I think are the top three to educate people on. - All right, thank you so much.

Bye. - My pleasure, and I'm glad you are here and I'm glad you're taking up. Read carefully the Read Aloud Handbook that you have gotten because all of it is in there. And then I would say check out probably the Read Aloud Revival podcast. I have never listened to this.

I've read her book called The Read Aloud Family. It's a second stringer to Read Aloud Handbook by Jim Trulise, but it's a good book. It's a very encouraging book. But she has a podcast called Read Aloud Revival the author of that. So I would go and look through her podcast and see if she discusses some of these themes.

And if you're interested in becoming an activist for this issue, which I think is a wonderful choice, that's a community that I would look for. (upbeat music) ♪ Blessing in the morning ♪ ♪ Come back Sunday morning ♪ - California's top casino and entertainment destination is now your California to Vegas connection.

Play at Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel to earn points, rewards, and complimentary experiences for the iconic Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas. ♪ I'm so down ♪ ♪ We're not alone ♪ Two destinations, one loyalty card. Visit yamava.com/palms to discover more. - Justin in Orlando, welcome to the show.

How can I serve you today? - Hey Joshua, and I can agree on the Hardy Boys. I think I have a lot of accelerator reader points back in the day, thanks to the Hardy Boys. - Absolutely. - They were great. (laughing) Question for you, and you can tell me if you don't like the question, or if it's too personal, but it's not so much of what should I do, but I was just kind of thinking and wondering, what do you do with your extra money in terms of investing or keeping in cash?

You have life insurance policies you talked about before, but tell me if you don't like the question, I can ask something else. - Yeah, I don't love to talk a ton of personal details. So I'll answer the question kind of broadly, but I'll just say I practice what I preach.

So my comment would be, the first most important investment category is into lifestyle. And so anything, there are a lot of little investments that people can make into lifestyle that can result in freedom. So I've invested into my lifestyle. I don't think that the idea, I have abandoned the concepts of hardcore, living on 10% of what I make kind of things just to stretch and to strain forever.

I'm at a point in my life stage in which lifestyle is important to me. Meaning that I want to live in a house that fits my long-term goals. I want to travel the world with my children. This is the stage of life in which I want to spend money.

If I could go back and do it over again and be 15 years old and be taught about extreme savings and whatnot, then I would embrace extreme savings at 15 years old. I would embrace extreme savings as a young single man. But I am at a stage in which I'm in and going into my highest expense years because of my family decisions and family obligations.

So my eldest is nine and I have a newborn and I have five children. And so these are the years in which I'm mostly focused on buying lifestyle. And that lifestyle primarily revolves around time with my children and opportunities for my children. So I spend a lot of money on travel.

I spend a lot of money on educational opportunities for them. I spend a lot of money on their education. Those are the things that are important to me. And I don't have much interest in kind of cheapening out on it. I enjoy pushing myself and my children into poverty-level conditions as a way of stretching us and keeping us flexible.

But I enjoy staying at nice hotels and taking, you know, I enjoy flying nice airlines and taking nice taxis and enjoy staying in nice hotels much more than I enjoy shoestringing it. And so to me, and let me just pause for a moment. Why am I starting with this rather than talking about investing?

I'll start logically. The only reason any of us should ever save and invest money is if we have something, if there's an expenditure that we would like to make with money in the future that we value more than the expenditure that we can make on the money today. So that's why you save money.

Other than that, you should consume money. There's no point in saving money. So when you're saving for the future, there has to be something in the future that you want more than what you can spend the money on today. That's why you save. So why drive a $2,000 car when you could drive a $100,000 car?

Well, because you want a $500,000 car in the future, or because you want a car that has more, that you want the $100,000 car and you want financial freedom so you don't have to work, et cetera. So when you reach, when you look at lifestyle, all of kind of conventional financial wisdom is focused on the idea of having more in the future.

And that makes a lot of sense when you're 15 years old. But it doesn't make a lot of sense when you are looking forward to having more when you're 95 years old. What's the point of having more money at 95 years old if you could have more money at 35 years old?

So that's what I'm trying to argue is simply that I'm at a stage in my life in which I am choosing to consume and I intend to substantially increase the consumption of money because I want to spend the money now more than I want to have more money in the future.

And to me, that's the logical, rational choice, especially given the stage of where I am with children. I would rather travel the world with my children and take them to a hundred countries rather than me have tons of money when I'm 30 years older so that I alone, or my wife and I alone, can go to the hundred countries.

So I'm primarily focused on consuming over the next decade and I'm making decisions that are focused on that. The second primary form of investment then is to invest into building income sources with my money that allow me to generate cash flow on a better structure. So I don't want to work 80 hours a week.

I don't want to work 60 hours a week. I want to work and be productive but I want to invest money into things that allow me to produce ever increasing amounts of money on a few hours of work per day because that enhances my lifestyle goals not just financially.

And so I've made a lot of moves in that direction and that's a primary focus for me. Because if you can create cash flow on a modest amount of time then you can have more financial abundance while also having more lifestyle abundance which is primary. Now flipping that around, what about extra money?

Well I think the standard approach for extra money should always be simply stocks because there is no other solution that provides the highest potential of long term wins with less risk and with less frustration than just simply buying the securities of publicly traded companies. When you understand how truly incredible it is that you can purchase these securities especially when wrapped up in a mutual fund or an ETF at a very low cost and you can have zero obligation and yet have substantial long term benefit and growth to me that's an incredible value proposition.

That should be the standard. So we should not deprecate the value of owning stocks. We should not deprecate the value of just a mutual fund, a standard mutual fund. Rather, in the same way that when we are doing analysis of investment returns and we look at the risk free rate of return of government debt and that's the baseline we should use the same philosophy when it comes to just simply owning a mutual fund and say this is the baseline.

Now prove to me that the alternative investment is better. And when you genuinely understand how incredible a run of the mill mutual fund is compared to all of the work and all of the hassle and all of the everything else that's required to pursue an alternative path mutual funds will shine most of the time.

Then finally a third stage. I have myself remained uncommitted to a specific geographic place. And that uncertainty has caused me to not be willing to make certain investment decisions that I would make if I committed to a place. And I've wrestled with this for the last few years. I'm content with it because it's a decision I've made.

But if I were committed to a place meaning that this was the specific place that I live, this is our town, this is kind of like our home then I would purchase real estate and I would invest into local businesses in the place. And so what I am doing is just waiting to see whether or not I choose a place that I'm going to be committed to or whether I continue this kind of weird lifestyle that I live.

And so in addition to those things that I said then I'm mostly focused on just stockpiling dry powder and waiting for opportunities as I see them. So those are my answers and the logic behind them. I'm at a stage in which I'm consuming and I want geographic freedom and we'll see what other investments I make in the future.

- Yeah, thanks. That's helpful to hear you think through. I didn't think you were going to say that you were investing in commodity futures or anything crazy. So that's about in line with what I expected but it's always helpful to hear how you think through these things. - I guess that means I've done my job right.

If my answer is as predicted then hopefully I am consistent in doing my job right. - Now for a limited time at Del Amo Motorsports get financing as low as 1.99% for 36 months on select 2023 Can-Am Maverick X3. Considering the Mavericks taking home trophies everywhere from King of the Hammers to Uncle Ned's Backcountry Rally you're not going to find a better deal on front row seats to a championship winner.

Don't lose out on your chance to get a Maverick X3. Visit Del Amo Motorsports in Redondo Beach and get yours. Offer in soon, see dealer for details. Kyle in Washington, welcome to the show. How can I serve you today? - Well, I wasn't going to ask you this but I just, as long as we're getting personal I thought I might ask you a follow up to that.

- I'm trying to get away from personal. Go ahead. - All right, I'll go. - Go ahead. - All right, I'm going to do it then. Okay, so what type of real estate seminar did your father talk you out of? - Do you remember Russ Whitney? - No, I haven't actually heard that name.

- Okay, so there was an organization that was like I think they did a motive. So here was the basic structure when I was in college. There was a motivational seminar. I forget what it was called. I think it may have been called Get Motivated. And the way the business model worked is they sold tickets to I think a three day motivational seminar.

And those tickets, again I think it may have been called Get Motivated but this is going back a long time so I don't remember. And then they would bring in, no actually excuse me, it wasn't a three day seminar, it was a one day seminar. So they brought in tickets to, it was a one day Get Motivated seminar.

So I went to Miami, downtown Miami Convention Center and it was kind of the first time I had ever been to a big motivational seminar. And it was incredible. I forget all the speakers that were there at this point. In fact I can't specifically identify a single name. But it was one of the most incredible days of my life.

Just that first initial motivational seminar. The tickets to that seminar were very inexpensive. I'm sure they charged something but it was one of the like, okay $29, something like that. Some nominal fee compared to getting a day of content was great. And then the way that the speakers did it is they gave a great talk.

They had about five or six, seven, eight speakers, something like that. They would give a really good talk. They would usually probably have 45 to 90 minutes, somewhere in that scenario. And then they would sell from the stage their next follow on appointment. And so this technique is so powerful.

You listen to a great presentation and then they sell and say, if you're interested in this, then you can go on to the next step. So at the time, Russ Whitney was running seminars. And he or one of his guys talked about real estate investing. And I was talking to my buddies about real estate investing.

And he said, I'm hosting a three-day seminar. And again, there was some laughably low entrance fee for that three-day seminar, right? $99, something like that. So I immediately signed up for his three-day seminar. Then I went to his three-day seminar. And they had a very well done structure. So day one was solid, consistent real estate content.

In hindsight now, of course, I understand. It was just the basics. But when you've never been involved in real estate, then it sounds incredible in terms of all the things that can be done. When you understand that you can have tax-free real estate money and you can use other people's money and whatnot, these basic concepts, when they're beautifully presented, are so powerful.

And then they did what Russ really excelled at, was techniques. So I forget who the instructor was, but the thing I specifically remember, it wasn't Russ himself. It was one of his guys. But what I specifically remember was he dropped all of the markers of financial success. So when he came in, he came in in a three-piece suit, beautiful, blue, dark, blue three-piece suit with a red tie.

And he talked about it during the seminar. He was like, "This is my banker suit. "This is what I wear when I go see a banker." But it conveys the impression. He casually let fall all of the markers of wealth, of his own wealth, right? So he made the comment and he showed a picture of his Prevo bus sitting out in the parking lot.

And about how he just goes on this bus because he doesn't like hotel rooms. And you're thinking, "Wow, this is a guy who's so rich "that he's got this $300,000 bus "and he doesn't want to use a perfectly good hotel room "'cause that's how rich he is." And shows the deals.

And of course, he showed the, "I bought this property for $17,000 "and I sold it for $125,000. "And you can do this too. "And then on day two or three, "anyway, I'm going too long, "but then they talk about the options for education. "And then of course, they go to the big package deal "and they have a consulting deal.

"And the consulting deal is you sign up "and you pay $20,000, something like that, "or $1,500 a month. "The numbers escape me." But I was so on fire about what could be done that I was completely ready to sign up for the big package consulting deal. And that was what my dad talked me out of.

And so looking back, Russ Whitney turned out to be basically a charlatan and a crook. Of course, most of what he said was okay. It was okay, good knowledge, but in terms of the structure, it was a lot of flim-flam stuff that a lot of advertising and very little actual substance.

And Russ himself later declared bankruptcy and was just one of the long line of disgraced real estate gurus. But that's who it was. It was Russ Whitney. I don't know where he is today or what he's doing, but that's the story. - It'll be a fun Google after the call.

- John Reed on his Guru Ratings page has comments on him. And Russ was sued specifically for a lot of his techniques. So they would use constant, I forget what they were, but just these, you know, making the room cold or hot and artificial table rushes and all of this stuff.

He would use all these techniques. And having gone through that and experienced the emotion of it, I discovered just how powerful those things are. And it's why we gotta be so careful to use our emotions and harness them in a positive sense and also to be very careful of when we're being run by emotions and we don't have them regulated.

- Yeah, I like that. It's easy to fall in love when you read, you know, I'm reading, I forget the guy's name, the Nothing Down guy. - Yeah, Robert Allen. - Allen, thank you. And yeah, it's really easy to say, oh yeah, I'm not gonna spend a single cent.

I'm gonna buy all these properties. So easy. Look how easy Robert Allen's doing. - Right. - Have you got another one for me? - I guess I was just gonna say that the lesson, and I may have been meaning to do this as a standalone podcast, so if I repeat it in the future, it's fine, but that's what a Friday Q&A show is.

One of the lessons that I have learned is, and part of what I described just there was there were three events in my life that have led me personally to hate mobs. I have been a part of one mob that was amazing to me, and I'll just tell the story briefly because it ties into what I said about psychology.

There was a time in which I went out with a mob of people, and we had pitchforks and torches, and we went out to kill the beast. Now, obviously the reference should be obvious, but when I was in high school, I acted in, I was in the chorus for our high school production of the Disney musical Beauty and the Beast.

And one of the things I vividly remember is during the mob song, where the villagers are going out to get the beast, right? ♪ He's got fangs, razor sharp ones ♪ ♪ Da-na-na, da-na-na-na-na-na ♪ That song, is we were acting in it, but as we're going out with pitchforks, singing about we're going out to kill the beast, and there's the Gaston is pumping us up in the show, one of the things I remember, and still just now, my skin is filled with goosebumps, I remembered every night I would be filled with these emotions, these genuine emotions of hatred for the beast, and like a genuine desire to go and kill this thing.

And it was just a play, it was just a stage production, but I would experience these emotions, and it scared me to my core. It, to this day, I'm so scared of mob psychology because of that initial experience. The second time I experienced a mob psychology was in what I described to you, where I remember being a part of the room, and I remember being manipulated from the front of the room to go and basically, as a 19-year-old kid, be ready to sign up for a tens of thousands of dollar consulting package.

And I remember how much I'm wrestling with the decision, and I was ready to do it. And I think about that a lot, about how could I have been so stupid, and so obvious, as my father wasn't trying to discourage me from becoming a real estate investor, he wasn't trying to say, "No, Joshua, you can't do it." He was just giving the voice of reason to say, "Maybe you shouldn't sign up for something that costs tens of thousands of dollars when you haven't first read a few books or gotten to know some people or gone and worked in a real estate office.

Maybe you can accomplish your emotionally important goal to you of financial independence through real estate, but you can do it in a sensible way." And I remember how much I hated him for that, like, trying to jump on my dreams and to beat my dreams down. And now I see the wisdom in it.

The third time was actually a different money seminar. So after I got on the list, and I don't, I think it was, no, actually, it was separate. So I was in a bookstore, and I bought T. Harv Ecker's book called "The Millionaire Mind." Really interesting book. I enjoyed a lot of what he said.

But in Ecker's book, his standard marketing approach for his seminar was he would give away tickets to his seminar in the book. And so I got the book, and I got these two tickets. So I called up, and I signed up. And once again, I went to Miami for T.

Harv Ecker's seminar. And I really enjoyed the seminar, right? There was some really good, useful concepts in it. But I remember this one technique that they used in the seminar. I don't think he's around. I don't think they do it anymore, so I'm telling you the sauce. But they were doing this.

We were specifically instructed to bring to, so there's an all-day seminar, and then we were specifically instructed to bring to the evening seminar a $100 bill. And I think we were instructed to bring a lighter as well. And the guy from the stage is going on and on about how if you're gonna master money, and if you're gonna get all the money stuff out of fixed in your head, then you've gotta make sure that money doesn't have any control over you.

And you have to prove it to yourself by burning money. You've gotta show that you don't care about money. And the way that we're gonna do this is we're gonna burn this $100 bill. And so I remember, $100 is a lot of money. And I didn't wanna burn a $100 bill, but I also didn't wanna miss out on the lesson from the stage.

And they're building the whole thing up, and the doors are closed, and everyone has their $100 bills, and it's kind of this mob ritual scenario. And we're right up at the moment where everyone's gonna start burning their $100 bill. And I'm sitting there saying, do I do it? Do I go along with the crowd and burn my $100 bill, or do I not?

I think this is stupid, but what do I do? And in the very last moment, they stop everything. And the lesson is, you idiot, why would you ever burn a $100 bill? But, like, and so the lesson was the opposite of what we were hearing. They were trying to say, you have to, the real lesson they were trying to teach was you have to show your respect by money every bit of it.

You should never even consider it. But I've always wondered, would I have burned the money or not? And what scares me is I don't know the answer. I can't confidently say that, I can't confidently say, no, I would definitely not have burned the money 'cause I'm smarter than that.

But I also know that I was wrestling with those things. And so for me, that question of mob psychology is really scary because I realize how easily I have been manipulated and how easily I could be a part of a mob. And it's one of the most dangerous, that idea of mob psychology is one of the most dangerous things in the human condition that I know of.

And so I don't judge people who do stupid things when they're part of the mob because I kind of see myself being susceptible just like them. But I try to learn for myself and try to teach others to say, let's exercise our logical brain and then be careful about the times we put ourselves in an emotional state that could lead to stupidity.

Emotions are really valuable. And so we want to harness the positive ones but not give way to the negative ones. - Yeah, that was fantastic answer. You got, I got a lot more personal out of you than I thought I would with that. Thank you. - My pleasure. Did you have any other questions or that was just your prod, your poke for today?

- No, I've got another. If you've got, if you wanna let me ask too, I'll ask too. - Go ahead with your second and I'll go quickly and then go on. Go ahead. - Okay, yeah. So what ideas do you have for generating earned income for a child to fund Roth IRA?

And this seems like something you may have already covered in the past. So if you wanna direct me to your catalog, you can move on. - I've been thinking about this for years and I have been, at some point I wanna develop this into a course. So I don't wanna give away all my great ideas, but I'll just give a few.

So I think the first ones are simply if the parent has a way to employ the child, that should be the ideal scenario. I think that people often, sorry, that's the most applicable thing. Obviously, if the parent has a business and the parent can employ the child in the business, then clearly that's an obvious solution.

But I think people overcomplicate it. They say, well, I have to have my own business into which I can employ my children. No, you can just employ your children. And so maybe you decide that these are some things that I want my children to do and I wanna pay them for it.

And so whether it can be mowing the lawn, it can be pressure washing the roof or the driveway or those kinds of things, and you can just simply pay your children. And I think that's a fair and useful thing to do. I believe in the concept of family chores, but I also believe that it's important that we pay our children.

Incidentally, one of the reasons why I think some of us who have been more hard-nosed should soften on this, is that we need our children to get accustomed to handling money. And so I have, over the past years, I have paid my children an allowance. If you had told me 10 years ago that I would do that, I would have been very surprised.

Because I would have been of the mindset, well, an allowance is welfare, right? And I don't wanna teach my children welfare. I don't wanna teach them that they can just have money. But the reason I started to pay my children an allowance was I realized I want them to get accustomed to handling money.

And if they don't have, and since my young children largely can't do much to actually earn money, if I wait until they're working and earning money, then they'll lose years of handling money. And I want them to get experience of spending money. I want them to waste money and discover how frustrating that is.

I want them to learn how to separate their money into giving and saving and investing, et cetera. And so in order for that to happen, I need to make money flow through their hands. And the most obvious way to do that is with an allowance. So back to the idea of paying your children for things.

Well, paying your children for things is a good way of getting money into your children's hands. And it is the appropriate thing if you can find anything in your life where you can just simply hire them and pay them. The second thing that I think is important to do is to look for jobs for your children within your social and peer group.

One of the things that my father did really well for me was he encouraged me to go and get jobs. And I remember growing up, most of the jobs that I had at a young age were jobs that I got from within our family network. And so in our church, there was a guy who had a landscaping company, and I would work for the landscaping company on my time off, just an extra helper.

It worked out fine. I worked for a tile setter who was in our church. I worked for a carpenter who was in our church. And so we just used the social community, and he encouraged us to go and take those jobs. And I don't think he was pulling strings.

Like, he wasn't paying, saying, "Hey, here's $500 for you to hire my son." But even if he had, that would have been smart because I learned so much from those experiences. And so if you have a social network or you know people who have those simple jobs that they can hire your children, there's a lot that can be done.

And by the way, it doesn't have to be actually a formalized business. And so one guy hired me to spread manure on his banana plants, right? He would get a truckload of manure and he needed someone to spread it. Well, there was several days of work. Other people, of course, would hire you to mow their grass and all those things and do cleaning and house cleaning.

I worked for a neighbor, and we did house cleaning. They would get contracts to do pre-construction-- or sorry, post-construction, pre-moving house cleaning. And so I would go and clean houses after the construction phase when the family was ready to move in. And you put all these things together, and none of them are much money, but on the whole, they are a good amount of money and a good experience if you just look for them and actively work for them.

The key is you can't work with big companies because they can't take the legal risk, etc. But if you can just find local small employers, that's a good scenario. Then you move on to the types of things that your children can do that can grow into a bigger opportunity.

So obviously the classics are, okay, modeling or something like that for our family business. But I don't think it's that necessary-- I don't think it's that necessary that we give them so many opportunities at a young age. What I think is more important that we teach them, once they're at the age where they can actually be productive, how to exercise and develop skills that other people will pay for.

So I've used the example of balloon tying. Somebody who's good at balloon tying can make a couple hundred dollars in a day at a festival. And so if you teach your children to say, "Let's learn how to tie 5 to 10 balloon animals," and then paint you in clown makeup and go to the street festival that happens twice a year, there's a few hundred dollars in that day for somebody to work.

Or if you look-- and I have friends who work for a family decorating business, and during the holidays they go and do-- and it's just seasonal work, but they go and do extra work during those times. And so if we're proactive about finding opportunities that are businesses for our children, then we can guide them just basically to see that you don't need to go and work for $8.25 an hour at an everyday part-time job if instead you can learn how to make a few hundred dollars by working at a balloon tying business at a festival.

And teaching people to keep their eye out for highly paid work that is seasonal to me fits in better with the needs of children. And a lot of it just comes from you encouraging and supporting it. I'll just give two examples. One, an early job that I had was-- when I was a young man-- I had a job working at a boat dealership cleaning boats.

And that job came about completely organically. It wasn't a connection that anyone had made for me. What it was is my older brother had had a fundraiser where they would have a barbecue for his school. And I had worked-- and they would have a fundraiser where they would cook thousands of chickens, barbecue chickens, and sell the meals as, again, a fundraiser.

And so I was just there hanging out, but I was a diligent worker helping with all of the process of the barbecuing, et cetera. And there was-- the father of one of the co-workers was there at the event with us. And he liked the way I worked. He said, would you like a job?

And he just offered me a job. Well, every Saturday, my dad had to take me 30 minutes to work and come pick me up, 30 minutes at the end of the day. But his willingness to do that and support me allowed me at a very young age to have this job of washing boats every Saturday.

And it was an important part of my life. Similar things-- there was a point in which I had a job working for a DJ who would DJ weddings and things like that. And I was primarily just a grump assistant to help set up the whole-- all the speakers and the light bars and all of that stuff.

But it was a neat experience. But in order for it to happen, my parents had to have confidence in me that even though I was a fairly young teenager, that they would allow me to be out late at night, on Friday nights and Saturday nights, et cetera, to help this DJ work.

And it was a useful part of my overall experience in life. So I don't think that it's so necessary that we have the exact business. But it is more necessary that we encourage the children to develop it. And so if it's to say, hey, here's a camera. Why don't you go to this local business and say, can I shoot a quick sizzle reel for your website?

And that's a money-making opportunity that a local business owner would be happy to spend $500 to get a sizzle reel for his Facebook page or something like that. And yet, that's something that the child can do very, very quickly. So I do have a good long list of things that I think are really worthy considerations.

But more importantly is just simply the attitude and the proactivity of the parents. Sure. And the ability for you to put that in the raw just comes down to, for example, the parent documenting what work the child did for who so that you don't-- as long as you can pass the SNP test at the auditing.

Right. Right. Absolutely. All right. Thank you, sir. My pleasure. We move on to Ori in Minnesota. Ori, welcome to the show. How can I serve you today? Hey, Joshua. My family is considering maybe possibly moving to South Florida. West Palm Beach down to Boca Del Rey, that sort of area.

I'll actually be there on a trip in the next two weeks. But I know you have lived there in the past. And in that area, I just kind of wanted to hear your thoughts about the area in terms of nice places to live, communities, kind of just general thoughts on the area.

I mean, I know it's beautiful. We vacation there. And I obviously love it in the winter. I haven't really been there in the summer. But I just kind of wanted to hear your thoughts in general on life in South Florida. Sure. Obviously, it's my neck of the woods. And it has a lot going for it.

But it also has some disadvantages. So let's start kind of on the macro level of Florida versus other states. I believe that Florida has an extremely ideal mixture of so many things, or at least things that I look for in a place to live. Florida is not an extremely polarized state.

It's a very, very balanced state, which is probably the healthiest kind of situation for us to live in on most levels. So Florida is not-- it's a Republican state. The Republican legislature controls the state. But in many ways, they're very balanced. They're not a Republican state in the same way that Idaho is a Republican state.

It's a very kind of mixture state. And when you move into South Florida, you get also a really interesting mix. You have this strongly Republican red state. And then you have these intense blue pockets. And of course, there are many benefits that you get with having those intense blue pockets.

So it's a state that has, as far as I'm concerned, an ideal mixture of freedoms. The freedoms that I care about that you may or may not care about, number one, really high quality homeschooling laws, great educational freedom. So you can pretty much do what you want. It's not a zero regulation state like Idaho or something like that.

But it's not an intrusive state. Homeschooling laws basically require that once a year, you have your educational outcomes reviewed either by a certified teacher or you have your children go through standardized testing. Those are basically the requirements. And so it's fairly simple, high degrees of freedom. It's a fairly free state with regard to medical freedom.

You can pretty much do the things that you want to do. You don't face a bunch of onerous, heavy-handed laws in terms of medical freedoms as far as how you handle your health decisions. It's a pretty good state with regard to things like gun laws and protecting your home, et cetera.

It's a generally well-run state with regard to the state finances. It's got a huge attractiveness as a zero income tax state. But unlike some other income tax states that don't have kind of a big business support or you worry about-- so Wyoming, for example, zero income tax state because of oil revenue.

So if oil revenue goes down, well, where does Wyoming get its things from? Well, Florida is a zero personal income tax state. And that's basically enshrined in the culture. It's a very, very safe protection for the culture because it's so much a part of what it means to be a Floridian.

Like Floridians, longtime Floridians, the idea of filing a state income tax is unthinkable to them because it's very much a part of it. And where the state gets its revenue is from corporate tax and other sources as well. So it's a really good state there. There is no better state for wealthy people in terms of wealth protecting laws.

There's no wealth tax. There's no estate tax. There's no state income tax on personal income. And then when you get into the asset protection laws where you have unlimited exemption for your primary homestead in terms of asset protection, you have unlimited exemptions for retirement accounts. And by state law, IRAs, Roth IRAs, Floridians, the same protection as 401ks.

You have unlimited exemption for things like annuities, life insurance, cash values, et cetera. From an asset protection state, I don't know of a better one that allows you to protect more of your assets. Now, there's not really anything beyond those categories, but it does protect those categories very, very well.

So I think that Florida is a really wonderful, balanced state where it has so many of the things that you appreciate about a red state, so many of the things that you appreciate about a blue state. It's very, very balanced. So now you go to Florida Geography and you try to figure out, well, what are the different regions that you can live in?

So in terms of big metro areas, you basically have four big metro areas. You have South Florida, which consists of the three counties of Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach. That's the South Florida area. And it's a little bit--they're kind of indistinguishable, but there's just one long line of development.

That's South Florida. Then over on the left coast, you have Tampa and St. Pete. That's another big urban center. In the middle, you have Orlando. And then up on the top right, you have Jacksonville. And that's basically it in terms of big cities. One of the great things about Florida is basically every lifestyle is available to you.

So you can be in downtown Miami or downtown Tampa, et cetera, and experience the big city lifestyle. On the other hand, you want to have a rural beach town, you go up to some of the cities south of St. Augustine or over on the Gulf Coast, you can just have this incredible, laid-back, relaxed beach lifestyle, et cetera.

You go through the middle of the state, Florida is a huge ranching and beef production state. And so you just have incredible remote, rural areas in central Florida. You want horse country. You go up north of Orlando into--I always forget the name of that region there--but amazing horse country.

You want the southern hills, you go up in the Panhandle, or you go up in the northern border, Gainesville, et cetera, and you just have totally diverse lifestyle choices. And that diversity involves weather, et cetera. So it's got all the different lifestyles that are represented, and you can usually fix those things in terms of how close you want to be to different issues.

Meaning how close you want to be to downtown, city, et cetera. It's pretty accessible. Now, what's the unique geography of South Florida? All of the South Florida geography is dictated based upon the Everglades. So the Everglades is a giant barrier that keeps South Florida from expanding westward. If you go across Alligator Alley and you cross, you see there's this giant thing.

And since it's all now protected, there's basically no development that can happen to the west of this narrow strip along the corridor. So that puts a lot of development pressure onto the tri-counties. So Miami and Broward and West Palm Beach face this. And until you get up and to northern West Palm Beach, basically, actually central West Palm Beach, in central West Palm Beach, you start to expand out into the western farming regions.

So west of, if you go at 441, west of Western Palm Beach is, you get Cluiston, Belle Glade, et cetera. These are all big farming regions, and you don't have the same, you don't have the same block by the federally protected wetlands. You have farming regions. And so what has been happening is West Palm Beach itself is spilling to the west, out there with new communities, new housing developments being made from this farmland.

But that doesn't happen in Broward and Miami because of the constraints of the coast and the Everglades. So in terms of choices, you have a couple different lifestyles that are available. So Miami is super, super interesting from a cultural perspective because of the intense Latin culture. So if somebody wants to live in the Latin culture, and they want to, they speak Spanish, or they have a Hispanic background, I think Miami can very fairly be called the capital of the Americas.

It is the most intensely Hispanic culture that is expressed, and really because it brings all of that together from all of South and Central America, there's just an incredible, intense Latin melting pot. You have all the Caribbean there, et cetera. So culturally, that's super interesting. It's like, I guess you can speak English in Miami, but I don't ever use English as a first language.

Whenever I'm in Miami, I just automatically default to Spanish. And so for some people, that's a pro. For some other people, it's a con. Miami, however, is super intense, and I think it has a lot of the worst things of the big city. Like the heat is horrific. Now, Florida is well-prepared for the heat, but still it's a concrete jungle.

The traffic, the rates you pay for car insurance, et cetera, are double what you pay when you go up north, farther to the north. So very bad traffic, too much urban development, and it's not very smart urban development. They've been doing it. There are several new train lines that have gone in.

Brightline now has train connections from West Palm Beach through Broward and into Miami. Miami has some connectedness on their metro rail, et cetera, but it's still a car-intensive city, and it's not super, super great. So who does I think Miami appeal to? Well, if you're young and you're single and you want to wear white pants and a fancy shirt and a gold watch, et cetera, you kind of do the party lifestyle and you want to have that young, intense experience, then I think Miami is a great fit.

If you have an affinity for Latin culture, then I think Miami is a great fit. If you want to live the downtown lifestyle, you want to live in brickle towers or something like that, or you want to have a great downtown penthouse and go to heat games or walking across the street to the American Airlines Arena, et cetera, then that's great.

And if you've got all the money in the world and you want to move on to one of the private islands and just kind of have that full Miami lifestyle, then I think Miami is good for that. So moving north, you get into Broward. Broward has all those same benefits of the beaches and whatnot, but Broward is where you start to get into kind of more the retirement culture mixed with the business culture.

So downtown Fort Lauderdale, you have lots of businesses, lots of big opportunities with kind of that downtown region, but then you start to get into the farms of housing communities. So the basic feature of South Florida is endless, endless, endless suburban developments. It's all very car-centric. They're all very beautiful, but you're going to be living in a suburban development where you have a homeowners association, et cetera.

That's just the lifestyle. And so if that appeals to you, you can find something in Broward, and that's a good, you know, they're fits. Then it's all just variations on the same. Coming up through Boca, you can--I mean, there's options. Boca, West Palm Beach, and then you get into northern West Palm Beach and moving into Jupiter.

So as you get to West Palm Beach, you start to have less traffic, less congestion, and more options. Prices go down quite a lot because of that basic factor of the Everglades, but they're still a lot higher than they are farther north in, say, Palm City, et cetera. So you get--so I like West Palm Beach because I think you get the best of both worlds.

In West Palm Beach, especially now as kind of the downtown has developed, you get basically everything you want in a big city but without the oppressive constancy of Miami. And so you can get out of it pretty quickly and you can get into it. It's just not as intense as the giant interchanges of the highway in Miami.

And then north of West Palm Beach, you can start to get into a much more laid-back culture. You go up to Hobe Sound, et cetera, and you can be genuinely rural. Or you can live--you know, Martin County, if you want to live on the water but you want to have it a very kind of quiet lifestyle, Martin County, Stewart, Palm City, et cetera, there's just so many little enclaves that are really, really wonderful.

So I think central and northern Palm Beach County are probably some of the ideal scenarios because you can access the business of West Palm Beach. You can access the beaches. You can access Broward and Miami fairly easily. When you want to fly in and out, you've got three great airports for domestic connections.

Palm Beach International is very, very convenient. And then for international connections, Fort Lauderdale and Miami are both wonderful airports. And so there's my kind of lay of the land. It's just a matter of saying, "Is this the lifestyle that we want?" And, you know, beyond--I mean, that's my overview, but I think it's a great region.

Great. Thank you, Joshua. We'll definitely look around when we're down there and think about our options. Appreciate it. Yeah, my pleasure. We move on to Pennsylvania. Welcome to the show. How can I serve you today? Hello, Joshua. Thank you for taking my call. So I had a question about when, if ever, does it make sense to make double payments on your mortgage or when to invest in a property to lower your interest that you're paying over time?

So I bought a property recently, and I'm using the upstairs as a rental unit. And in coordination with a side business I have, that pretty much covers the cost of the mortgage. So--well, mortgage and utility. With that in mind, at what point should I be investing-- like, diversifying into the property versus just stocks and other investments?

What interest rate is your mortgage? That's 5.625%. Okay. Basically, the only reason that I can see-- be careful with that word "only." Let me change that adjective to "major." The major reasons that I can see that you should make double payments on your mortgage are these. The first is if making that extra payment is personally motivating to you.

What I mean is, every single month, do you find that you're willing to work extra, or do you find that you're willing to lower your consumption in some other area because of the tangibility of making that extra mortgage payment? This is what is, I think, the most important reason, is that if you are going to-- if making the extra-- so let's say your mortgage payment is $2,000 a month, or $1,500 a month, and you're thinking of, "Should I put the $1,500 at--" Sorry.

Your standard mortgage payment is $1,500 a month. You have an extra $1,500 a month, and you're thinking, "Should I put the money "into a savings account or into an investment account, "or should I put it into the mortgage?" Generally speaking, if your stock account, your 401(k) doesn't beat the rate of return that you're going to make on your extra payment to the mortgage, we're all done for.

Everything breaks and falls apart. Even at 5.625%, I still think that that holds true. Now, it was easy for me to say that was 3%. It may be harder when we're saying at about 8%, but at the end of the day, your stocks in your 401(k) have to substantially outperform mortgage payments, or our entire financial system unhinges itself.

Like, it's all--all of our assumptions are no longer valid. We're in a new era, which is possible. I don't think it's the case, but it's possible. And if you can't make more than 5.625% on your investments, then, again, everything collapses. The financial question as to whether you should pay down debt or invest the money is exclusively a question of interest rate, of higher rate of return.

So if you don't--your investment should exceed 5.625%, which means that every single time you put that into a calculator, you're better off investing the money than you are paying off debt. That's the math. But what the math often ignores is motivation. So a lot of people are not motivated to go and make an extra $1,500 so that they can invest the money at higher than 5.6%.

Whereas a lot of times, having a clear, tangible goal of, "I want my house paid off in 10 years. I want my house paid off by my 40th birthday." This clarity of goal is motivating to people in a way that the investment accumulation is not. This motivation is enhanced by a couple of factors that are unique about debt payoff.

Number one, debt payoff is certain. You can be guaranteed of your 5.625% savings when you lower your mortgage value. Debt payoff is predictable. Your mortgage payment is going to go down, and you can model that. You can put a chart on your refrigerator, and you can say, "See, by my 40th birthday, this house is going to be paid off." That clarity of mind and intentionality can cause people to make unbelievable improvements in their financial life, spending less, making more because of that clarity.

I don't experience, and I haven't seen people experience, that same clarity when it comes to investment returns. That's because, number one, in the beginning, your investment contributions are not going to lead to a number that is going to cause you to see how it's a meaningful difference. Let's say that you get all motivated about putting your extra $1,500 a month into your account, and you say, "Guess what?

By my 40th birthday, I'm going to have $250,000 in my 401(k), whereas if I didn't do that, I would have $150,000 in my 401(k)." Well, so what? Now, obviously, that $100,000 is a lot of money, but at the end of the day, you're not financially independent with $250,000 in your 401(k).

It can pay off a lot when you're 65, if you have it in there at 40, but it's going to take you a long time to see that. The other thing that's so difficult is you can't predict with certainty what that actual account balance will be. So what if you're all motivated, and you're focusing, and you're saving money, and you're putting that extra $1,500 in there, and for some reason it's motivating and clear to you that I'm going to have $250,000 in my 401(k) because of this sacrifice that I'm making and the fact that I'm working this extra part-time job.

And then along comes a random year in the stock market where it goes down 20%. All of a sudden, your $250,000 account balance that you were excited about drops to $160,000. And because of the ephemerality of that, because of the fact that it's hard to connect with, you're immediately like, "Well, they're going to want my goal." Now, we all know that maybe the next year you'll be super happy because it'll come up 20%, and all of a sudden you're looking great.

But that certainty that you have with paying off debt, etc., is a really powerful, powerful movement. So the third factor I would say is, is there something that not having a mortgage payment is going to allow you to do that if you had the mortgage payment you wouldn't otherwise allow yourself to do?

I think in reality, as I've argued publicly, which I assume you've heard, I think in general you're always better off with the money in the bank rather than no mortgage payment. If I could choose between having $100,000 in the bank and a $150,000 mortgage versus having a $0 in the bank and a $50,000 mortgage, or even a $0 in the bank and a $0 mortgage, I would choose the $100,000 in the bank because I have freedom of decision in that situation that I don't just by not having a mortgage payment.

But sometimes having a $0 mortgage balance does indeed open up new options in your thinking. And because it's so clear and so tangible, you don't have to rely on financial engineering and what your financial advisor tells you. You just know, "I don't have any bills." That can allow you to sail the world.

That can allow you to do those things that start a business or have more children, that you wouldn't otherwise do. So financially, you're almost certainly better off in the long run investing the money versus prepaying a mortgage. But motivationally, if the clarity and the focused nature of prepaying the mortgage can cause you to feel very motivated, then that motivation is the X factor that can't fit easily into a spreadsheet.

But I'm convinced it's real. - Okay, thank you. Yeah, I wouldn't say it's about a motivational thing. It would be more the math equation of rate of return over the past year in the market and in the situation we're at with the stock market. So whether spreading that money out into something other than just retirement account and stocks and bonds is an important factor to consider.

But no, I think I'll just look for other areas to improve that rate of return versus the mortgage. So thanks for your time. - Yeah, if the businesses that you can buy in the stock market don't give you, on the aggregate, a higher rate of return than paying down a mortgage on a piece of property, our entire financial system is upended and we will be in genuinely a new era, regardless of what the one-year returns are.

To me, that's just an obvious truth. Our entire system of finance is based upon the idea that businesses are going to be productive. Now, if that changes, we're in a brave new world. Missouri, welcome to the show. How can I serve you today? St. Louis, Missouri. 314-- - Hey, Joshua, you hear me?

- Yep, no, go ahead. - Good deal. My wife and I got married last year in honor for our one-year anniversary. We're taking a European trip, and as part of that trip, we're going to spend four to five days in Malta. I know you had been there previously. I think it was last year, maybe the year before, on your family travels, and just wanted to get your opinion about it and if you had any recommendations while I was there relating to touristy things to do and any international plan B or backup plans, anything you have would be great.

- It's funny. It's such an out-of-the-way place. You're the second or third time I've gotten questions about Malta, and it's such an unusual place. I went there because of my interest in their cryptocurrency. They want to become like Crypto Island, and they have just some other interesting components of it, but I also have been a lot of other places in Europe.

It's an interesting place. So let's start with the tourist stuff. The tourist stuff is fairly straightforward. It's a beautiful Mediterranean island, and have you found, do you already have your places to stay lined up? - Yes, we do. - Good, so you'll have a hotel or a resort or whatever, and it's a fairly small place that has just this really interesting history, so you'll certainly want to spend at least a day or two in the downtown Valletta area because the history of that is really remarkable.

That is what is incredible about Malta, is the long-term history. Downtown Valletta is so interesting. They have great tours, great insight into the history, et cetera. There is a city that is one of my favorite old cities, and I'll come up with a name in a moment because it was formerly kind of the capital city refuge area.

It's called the Medina Old City, and one of the things that I think is interesting about Medina is it's an old-walled city, but it gives you an insight into the cities of the past, and I was amazed from, I really care about it from an architectural perspective, meaning I'm fascinated by the stone architecture, the narrow streets, how comfortable it is, even in a blazing hot climate, et cetera, and so make sure you spend time for a tour of Medina.

There is also an interesting set of very old buildings. They claim, let's see, what is their claim? The oldest human buildings in existence, these old ruins, I forget what they are, but they're very famous, world heritage sites, these old ruins, I forget the name of them. That's also worth accessing.

You can access all of these things on the public bus system. They have a public bus system that covers the entire island of Malta, and then you can, of course, go over to the other island of Gozo. Malta is made up of basically five islands, two of which are inhabited, but you can go to Gozo if you want to go and experience that as well.

Then Malta has several kind of well-known tourist attractions, all of which are easily booked. They have the Blue Grotto, this amazing old caves that you can travel into, and then they have various sightseeing things to go and spend a day in the Blue Lagoon and some of the other stuff that they have.

So five days, you can fill up five days with those activities in a very straightforward way, and it's perfectly accessible. Those are the recommended. I've done all those, and those are the recommended activities. In terms of transportation, again, you can get around the entire city on the bus system, and they have scooters and whatnot that you can rent and ride as well.

You mentioned Plan B. Were you interested in other things more than just tourist stuff? Yeah, I had done a little bit of research as far as a residence is concerned, that kind of thing. It seemed pretty expensive for if you were just to invest and give a bunch of money.

I think one option that I read up on was to buy like a $325,000 piece of real estate. That would get you access, but I'm not in the situation to do that right now. Right. It was just a general question. If there was anything like Canada opening a foreign bank account, that kind of thing, that you have in mind.

Yeah. I don't recommend Malta for banking. I do recommend Malta for a lot of Plan B stuff, but it is all premium-level Plan B. So what Malta is most well-known for in the international circles is their Citizenship by Investment program. For those who have the almost seven figures, it is the best way to get yourself a very, very quick, very, very doable Plan B citizenship.

Malta calls it their exceptional citizenship program. Basically, the way it works is you go to Malta, you make a very large donation directly to the Maltese government, you rent or buy property on the island, you make some other donations, etc. It comes out to just under, basically, just a little bit less than a million dollars, and you and your family can all become Maltese citizens.

As Maltese citizens, you now have a Grade A citizenship that allows you to travel the world, live and work in Europe, etc. The problem is the price tag. It's about an 18-month process to do the entire thing, but in 18 months you can be a European citizen. For those who are interested in that and who have the money, I would say you should move fast.

One of the things that is, that this particular program has been under attack since it was incepted. And there have been other programs in Europe previously, and the pressure from the European Union has caused all of those programs to close. Previously Cyprus, etc., some other countries had these kinds of programs.

Malta is the last remaining program. Interestingly, just this morning we received news from the nation of Portugal that Portugal has cancelled its Golden Visa program. The Portuguese Golden Visa has been an extremely attractive option that many, many Americans and global citizens have taken advantage of to go to Portugal, purchase real estate in Portugal, and be granted a visa to live in Portugal.

That visa can eventually lead to citizenship. I use this just as an example to say that these things close. For those who have the almost seven figures, and that makes sense for you to simply purchase a second citizenship, and you want one that gives you incredible global freedom, travel access, as well as the ability to live anywhere in the European Union, Malta is the ticket, and you probably should get on it quickly, because we don't know how long it will last.

Now coming back from that, Malta also has a Golden Visa program, and so that's what you're referring to, is that you could invest a lot less than a million dollars, several hundred thousand dollars, and you can get residency rights in Malta. In addition, Malta has several attractive tax programs, including for some people to situate a company there, and/or for your personal residence to be there.

But all of those are at the top levels of income and significantly expensive. So unless that makes sense for your business life, I would just focus on enjoying my vacation much more than I would focus on doing any kind of that level plan B stuff. That's great. Thanks so much for all my questions.

Enjoy your trip. While you are there, where are you flying in from? We're actually spending a few days in Italy first. We'll be flying into Rome, and then we're going to travel down to Naples. Then we actually catch a flight from Naples to Malta, and then after four days we'll fly out to London.

Okay. Wonderful. So you can fly. There is also a ferry, so you can take a ferry, depending on how much time you have. One of the things that I think is super interesting is you can take a ferry across from Malta to Sicily, and then you can take the train from Sicily up into Italy, to Rome, so back either way, and then you can also, of course, take it across Europe.

Then there are also a couple of interesting inexpensive flights that are from Malta. Ryanair has a flight that you can go to Israel on Ryanair, pretty inexpensively from Malta, and also to Turkey. So if you have more time, once you're in Malta, there are some interesting inexpensive flight destinations that you can exploit as well.

But enjoy it. It's a really fascinating time. Let me make one book suggestion for you that I read with my children that you may enjoy, and I'll give you the title. There is a book called A Knight of St. John, A Tale of the Siege of Malta. So it's called A Knight of St.

John, A Tale of the Siege of Malta by Captain F.S. Brereton. And this is a remarkably--it's a very interesting book. Brereton is a very unknown author. G.A. Henty is the one who gets all the attention for his historical novels, but Brereton is a really interesting novel. Captain Brereton. And this particular book talks about the siege of Malta from the--I think it was the 1400s--with the Turks.

And it talks a lot about the interesting history of the Knights of St. John. While you are there in Malta, you will tour some of the establishments of the Knights of St. John. They're now known as--they were known as the Hospitallers, and they're also known as the Sovereign Order of Malta.

And they moved from there. So this is a really fascinating bit of history, where originally many of the Christian crusaders went out from Europe, and they went to the Holy Land on the Crusades. And while they were on the Holy Land, they wanted to participate in very--while they were there, they saw the need of these charitable works.

And they started to create this--again, I think it was called the Hospitallers' Order or something like that. And if you go and you read about the Order of Malta, you'll see the whole history. But while they were there, they established-- so they established these charitable works, and they started focusing on establishing hospitals and whatnot, providing care.

Anyway, long story short, they wound up setting up a base at Rhodes. And then there was the siege of Rhodes, and then all of the knights were driven from Rhodes eventually to Malta. And then while they were in Malta, they were later attacked by the Muslims from Turkey. And it was just this incredible--just these incredible battles.

So one of the fascinating things about Malta is that basically it has been attacked by everyone. Because of its strategic location, sitting right there in the Caribbean, then they've been attacked by the Turks, the French. They were attacked in World War II. There's an incredible history of their resilience in World War II, et cetera.

And so there has been a constant history of siege by all of the surrounding nations who've wanted to control this very strategic island right in the middle of the Caribbean. So back to the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. It's a super interesting organization because it is a sovereign country that for many decades, at least decades, had no land.

And so Sovereign Military Order of Malta, which has nothing to do with the current day-- sorry, not nothing to do, but is not the Maltese government of the nation of Malta--is a country, it's an independent state that does not have land. It's a UN state. Now, they now have a building that they work in, and it's a very small thing, but it's a Catholic fraternal order that is dedicated to charitable works all around the world, especially hospitals, et cetera.

So if you read a little bit in advance before you go, I think it'll help you to appreciate things a little bit more. And my children really enjoyed that book called A Night of St. John, as far as it's an adventure story, and they really enjoyed it because then you can go and you can see how everything develops.

That would be my literary recommendation for you in advance of your trip. >> Well, thank you. I'll be sure to be up on it. >> My pleasure. And with that, we come to the end of our Q&A show. Thank you for bringing me a great and interesting set of questions.

I've enjoyed it very much. If you would like to join me on next week's Q&A, go to patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance, patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance, and that will gain access to next week's Q&A, where you can call in and talk about anything you want. Have a great weekend. Be back with you as soon as I can.

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