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No matter how you shop, Ralph's has all the freshest ingredients to embrace all your holiday traditions. Ralph's fresh for everyone. 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 Joshua. Today is Friday, June 2, 2023. And on this Friday, as we do on any Friday in which I can arrange the appropriate gear to record a call, we do live Q&A. Works just like call-and-talk radio. You call in, talk about anything that you want, ask any questions, raise any topic.

The floor is yours and we could chat back and forth. If you would like to join me as a caller on one of these Friday Q&A shows, you can do that by becoming a patron of the show at patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance. Sign up to support the show on our Patreon page and that will gain access for you to these Friday shows.

We begin with Tom. Tom, welcome to the show. How can I serve you today? Hi, Joshua. Thank you very much for taking my call. My pleasure. So, I'm calling from the UAE because I recently moved there. And I have a couple of questions because by being used to the European countries here, things are a bit different.

And I was wondering, first of all, what type of geo-arbitrage opportunity would you consider by being here? Especially when it comes to the currencies, because from the knowledge that I have about the dirham, I know that it's pledged to the dollar, but then I don't really know how, what should I consider in banking here compared to euros?

Should I transfer money back? So, this type of things. And the second question is related to savings. In particular here, I have a higher wage compared to Europe and I am able to set aside a good percentage of it. And so my question is, what should I do with that?

I mean, I can build a sort of emergency fund that I didn't have earlier since I just started working. But then with the rest, should I start looking into ETFs? Should I just spare them? Just your suggestions on that. Which European nation did you move from and how long have you actually been in the UAE now?

So, I moved from Germany and I've been in the UAE, it's like three weeks. Do you have a contract, an employment contract? Yeah. How long is your contract for? Three years. Three years? Okay. And are you single? Are you married? Do you have children? No, I'm single. Okay. How old are you?

26. Prior to this, have you ever lived outside of Germany or worked outside of Germany? Yes, but in Europe. Okay. So, in the beginning, I think the advice would be go very slowly because it takes time for you to understand a new place and understand how you respond to that new place.

There's nothing other than simply setting up a few basic logistics. So, for example, you have a residency permit that is sponsored by your company. You'll open a bank account, have a simple debit card, etc. Other than those basic upfront logistics, then I would defer most decisions for a minimum of something like three to six months until you get a sense of whether this is something that you think is going to work out for you or not.

In my experience with Culture Shock, you're going to go through a couple of phases of Culture Shock. In the beginning, everything is fun. So, you're going to enjoy all of the new things, all of the new sights, the sounds, the smells. You're going to appreciate all of the brand new experiences.

The things that are... It's going to be fun. It's fun in the beginning. Then you'll reach a period in time, some months in, where you're going to start to feel significantly homesick and you're going to start to miss all of these things about your hometown, your home culture, etc.

And then, depending on... I don't know exactly how long that lasts. For me, it was several months where I just felt like, "I don't belong. This isn't going to work," etc. And then you get through that and you can see things with a little bit more clarity. So, in my experience moving abroad, it was about a year before I really felt comfortable.

But it was only until... It was more than a year before I could gain clarity on the things I appreciate about other places, the things I appreciate about my home country, etc. And so, there's not a lot of need to do anything all that quickly. Time... Making slow decisions, in general, is a wise move because you make better decisions.

Obviously, there are times which you need to choose quickly. But once you've decided to move there, once you've accepted your employment contract, etc., other than your first basic logistics, there's not a lot that needs to be done. If I woke up in your shoes, I would keep all of my existing infrastructure as it is in Germany with one kind of verification.

In order for you to become non-tax resident in Germany, do you know the rules on that with the German government? Do you need to... Can you keep your assets, your bank accounts, and everything like that in Germany? Or do you need to move that stuff? No, technically, based on what I know, I should be fine.

Right. So, as long as you would be fine, based upon the advice that you've gotten from German advisors, I would just keep all of my pre-existing infrastructure in Germany and then just set up some new stuff in the UAE. The obvious... One obvious benefit of being in the UAE is access to a great job market.

Hopefully, you got a great contract. Hopefully, you're making a ton of money. And that money can be received completely income tax-free. Huge benefit of being in the UAE. So, for these three years while you are there, I think your ambition should be... Assuming you're just getting started building your financial empire, your ambition should be to make absolutely as much money as you possibly can, to live on a very low amount of money.

I won't say as little as possible, but to be very tightly in control of your money. At 26 years old, single, you should be very, very tightly in control of your money and you should be living dramatically below your means. So, a very low amount of spending. The reason I'm hedging and not saying, you know, absolutely you should spend as little as possible, is that I don't want you to miss out on some of the experiences that you can have being in a new place.

And I think you should budget for being in the place that you are and enjoying seeing and doing something new. I think you should budget money to take weekend trips all around the region. You know, go to Oman for a couple days, go to Saudi Arabia for a couple days, take advantage of all of the inexpensive flights that are available from there, set up alerts and take weekend trips around the area, because you're in a great travel hub for that.

And then take advantage of some of the experiences that are at your fingertips. So, go out with, you know, take a couple of buddies and go out and bash across the desert in land cruisers and really just enjoy some stuff. But keep your spending as low as you can.

Keep the basic infrastructure of your life as modest as possible. And so, finding that balance I think is important, because your goal when you're 26 and you finish this three-year contract, your goal is to have, I don't know what your salary is, but at least, you know, hundreds of thousands of euros if possible, but minimum six figures of euros and hopefully multiples of that, set aside so that you can do whatever you want.

One three-year contract with a good job and a good income, especially when you have zero taxes that you'll owe on that, can be the thing that buys you freedom for the rest of your life. And I don't think you need to make any decisions about what you do with it beyond just putting it in the bank and leaving it there.

Now, coming back to the question that you asked, what currency should you utilize? I think if I were in your shoes, I would say, are you getting paid in Durham's? - Yeah. - Okay. So, I would think it would be reasonable to keep it in Durham's and/or, and as you mentioned, the peg, go to dollars if and when possible.

I think for most people, the dollar should be the primary core of your currency at these holdings at this point in time. If you were earning in euros and living in euros, then obviously, you would have stayed mainly in euros, but even then, I think the dollar has a much stronger future than the euro does.

And so, I apply the same basic thing. I don't have, myself, I don't have a formula for it. When I lack a formula, I go to a Pareto analysis and I say, I want 80% of my money to be in the world's reserve currency, which is going to be the dollar.

And so, I don't know, I've never lived in Dubai myself, I'm not sure your best way to hold it, but I would imagine you can just simply get an account there where you get paid in Durham's into one account and you can have a dollar account with the same bank.

And I would just do that and transfer it into a dollar account for the next few years. You probably have enough euros in Germany to see you through and to make sure that you have plenty of savings to do things you want to do there. And so, if I woke up in your shoes, I would primarily just bank in the dollar as is convenient and as is appropriate.

And then, I guess what I would say is prior to the financial stuff, I don't see anything financially that you need to rush into. Now, six months, nine months, 12 months from now, fine, that's different. But what you should be primarily focused on right now, having just moved to a new city, is building your social capital, building your connections, building your network of friends, acquaintances, etc., because that's what's going to make the difference for you.

Do you have a plan for how to make friends in Dubai, etc.? So, at the moment, I don't have a clear plan. I'm mainly getting to know all the people that I work with, so mainly I interact with them, and then maybe expand based on the friends that they have here already.

Right. So, just a couple of thoughts, just to give you some suggestions. So, first, I think you should make it a priority. Your work is important. You're there to work. And at 26 years old, you should be working. But you don't want to waste the opportunity of meeting new people and building friendships.

And those friendships are probably, since Dubai is such a transient place, people coming in and out, you can meet a lot of people, and those friendships can open up opportunities for you around the world. It would be unusual for you to still be in Dubai 10 years from now.

You might find you love it, you might find a long-term fit, and you might be there 10 years from now. But it wouldn't be so normal for that to be the case. It would be very usual that you would be there for a specific amount of time, and then you would move on.

The Dubai government, the UAE government is trying to change that, but at the moment, that still seems, as best I can tell, that seems to be the way that the place functions, a very transient place. But the benefit of that is you can build friendships from all around the world, and that may open up opportunities to you.

So, certainly begin with your co-workers. That's where you want to make relationships. So, give priority to socialization, whatever form that is, if it's lunch, if it's drinks after work or whatever, give priority to that. Find some core areas and activities, and commit yourself to those areas and activities. So, number one would be, if you're a church-going man or a religious man, find your local church and go there, and start making connections there, because you'll have a much closer, much more in common with people with whom you share a religious viewpoint of life.

Number two, look for a local gym and get yourself in a schedule. So, you find a local gym and join a gym that is going to fit with your overall structure, and be in the place that is going to have people coming through that you're going to want to be friends with, has your kind of people in it.

Look for another activity, ideally some kind of class environment, so maybe a boxing gym or a fight gym or something like that, some place where you can have some camaraderie in the area. And then you might look for something educational, if there's something you'd like to learn about, some kind of class you'd like to take, or something related to your career, etc.

But go through anything like that and become a member of the local community by finding those community organizations. And then be the one who initiates events. What I find works the best, since today it seems like very few people are spontaneous and do stuff, what I try to do is just be the one who starts the events.

And so you organize an event and, "Hey, we're going to go to Abu Dhabi this weekend," or, "Let's go ahead and invite some people with you," and make a practice of inviting people and doing things. I myself use my home a lot, do dinner parties, things like that. I think that's a good idea for you.

If you can do that, that might be in conflict with your having a cheap apartment, but find some kind of anchor events that can help you. I'd recommend the classic Keith Ferrazzi book, "Never Eat Alone." If you're looking for ideas of how to become a networker and connector, that's a pretty good place to start.

That's really great. Thank you very much for all the suggestions. And then, I guess, to put it all into perspective, my final comment, I know I'm not laboring a lot on the investment side of things, but what I would see is just save money. And if you just save money for the next few years, then it'll be more obvious what you should do.

But your goal of coming out of this contract is when you're 29 years old, your goal is to have a bank account with hundreds of thousands of dollars set aside from your work, from your low-tax lifestyle, so that you can look at the world afresh and see what would be the best for you.

Because that will develop your nest egg, that if you want to go back to Germany, you can now go back in a totally different space than you went. If you want to go to another country, you can come in, and instead of coming in as perhaps somebody who was a student for a time, and again, I'm projecting this, I'm just guessing this, but you were probably a student for a time, you probably had some jobs, etc., and this might be your first big break.

But when you get your first big job, then your focus, your goal, is to stockpile as much money as possible, so that when you go into the next thing, you never start off at that entry-level position again. And I don't just mean in terms of your job, I mean financially.

It stinks. It's so hard to accumulate your first 100,000 euros. But once you got it, the goal is never fall back down into that world again. The goal is from now on to have the financial ability to make bigger moves that can get you forward faster. And so I couldn't advise you, I can't tell you exactly what to do and what to invest in, but I don't think you need to do any of that until it's more obvious for you.

So six months or a year from now, if you're just sitting in some form of a safe, secure bank account, I think that's fine. If in the meanwhile, you've developed an investment plan and you want to own mutual funds or something like that, that's fine. But I think that often people jump too quickly into saying, "I have to invest money, I have to invest money," when they've never had the joy of actually having money.

And so give it some time to accumulate it, enjoy the tax-free nature of it, and then make your decisions over the coming years. We go to Jose Luis in North Carolina. Welcome to the show. How can I serve you today? Hello, Joshua. Thank you for taking my call. My pleasure.

A few weeks ago, I called and I had a question about how you would teach French to children if you didn't know it yourself in the first place. And now I've been thinking about it, I've been exploring different options and haven't done anything yet. I did a little bit of too much analysis and can't make a move.

So I'm calling with three questions, and I wonder if you can give me your opinion on them. The first one would be for my child, our oldest, he's seven and a half years old. He can read in both English and Spanish. And so the question is, would you consider using the Ayan Academy or the LingQ app with him?

You mentioned those two for an adult, but I wonder if for a child who can already read another language, if you could consider that as one of those two. Does the seven and a half year old read voluntarily, extensively, on his own accord, in English and Spanish already? He's a good reader, but he doesn't do it unless we ask him to read.

Most of the time. So my answer is yes, you can do it. It's very effective. I think that for a reader, there are few things more effective than learning a language by reading. The problem is that many people are not readers. And so for adults, for example, I don't try to force people to do what works for me.

If I talk to someone and they're interested in learning a language, and I ask them, "Do you read books in your native language?" And they say, "No, I don't." Then my answer is, "Well, maybe you should just watch Netflix in your foreign language." Because the key is to find activities that the language learner is going to be engaged with fairly naturally and fairly normally.

The whole reason I make such a big fuss about bilingual children's stories is that for many people, and I think most, at least most of my audience, we know that reading stories to children is something that is normal. And so if we can get them to read the story in their native language, or sorry, if we can get them to listen to a story in a native language, then they will also probably enjoy the story in the foreign language.

So my biggest concern would be if your son is not a reader, and he's not really loving reading, then he may not find that particular activity very appealing. I think you can do it. It's probably a little bit young to focus on ION Academy resources, things like that. I used ION Academy stuff with my eight-year-old when teaching German.

But my eight-year-old was a very, very strong reader. And so I have not done the same intensive approach with my now seven-year-old because she's not such a committed reader. And so I'm much more gentle and much more relaxed because as I see it, learning new foreign languages is much farther down the list of priority from establishing a real competency and strength in core competency of reading in a native language.

And so I haven't pressured or even exposed really much in foreign language reading when she was younger. Now, I do a little bit of it now, and so we've come past it. Since I've gotten her to be a much stronger reader, and she's voluntarily reading, we do extensive amounts of free voluntary reading, etc., and I don't have to--there's no push, there's no pressure on my part.

Now I am introducing more of that. But I think that as a parent, you have to judge, and you have to make--if at all possible. I'm not convinced that as parents, our goal should just be to do whatever our children want us to do. I have a big problem with that.

So my goal is not to just be a free parent who, "Hey, child, you know best, whatever you want to do." I think that's nonsense. But on the other hand, I don't want to force anything or require the use of discipline and compulsion if it's not necessary. And so as a parent, I think you have to judge, "What does this child need this now and right now?" And you're the only one who can do that.

So if you can find activities that are more interesting to your child and that are very short, etc., then do those. And if you do use reading, like ION Academy resources, things like that, keep them short and keep them varied, and don't push beyond where it becomes a chore.

Because if you can succeed in making a learning experience a pleasurable and enjoyable task, then you go much farther in the long run than if it becomes a drudgery and the child bristles at it and just doesn't want to do it because it's too much work. Thank you. I get it.

That's very helpful, actually. A similar question, but for adults. I know you said you use LingQ for learning French yourself, and then you use ION Academy for learning German. My question would be, do you know which one of the two you think you would use for your next language?

Which one is a better choice of the two for you? So the question that you're probably trying to aim at is, "What's better?" And I myself have given up the concept of finding the best thing. If I go into learning something at this point in time, I basically just buy five or ten of what I think is going to be the best things.

I'm not trying to be profligate or wasteful with money, but I think that the search for the thing that is the best is a fruitless search. You don't know until you get into it. And every resource has some benefit, and every resource has some other disadvantage. And so what I try to do is I try to choose resources that are modest in cost, so I don't go out and buy an $800 class that I don't know if I'm going to finish or not.

And so, for example, LingQ is $12 a month. ION Academy is, I don't know, $10, $12 a month. So I'm not going to go broke using different sources when I'm paying $10 to $15 a month for them. And so I don't try to prejudge things as this is the best or that's the best.

I basically just make a list of the resources I think might be useful, and then I start them and I try them, and I see which ones I'm drawn to and which ones seem to work better at this point in time. You can learn almost anything with almost any resource.

And so it's more a matter of what resources stick right now. And what I'm looking for is I'm looking for a resource that has a good balance of engagement, where I don't dread going and doing it, and effectiveness. So I'm not looking for it to be so fun that I just love it but ineffective.

I want effective, but I also don't want it to be pure drudgery. So those two resources work well together, and they're both cheap, so try both of them and see which one works for you. I add and drop resources all the time, and I just figure if I waste a few hundred dollars, but I come out the other side of my learning experience actually having the knowledge, it wasn't a waste.

I didn't have the understanding prior to making the purchases. I didn't have the understanding necessary in order for me to choose the best topic or the best resource. And then in general, I think almost nobody can put together the perfect resource. I would like to believe that every class and course that I teach is the perfect thing, but in reality that's nonsense.

All you need as a learner is something that's good for you at this point in time that gets you a little bit deeper. So you may spend $1,000 to go to a conference this weekend. I've known people who've done this. They'll go to a conference, and they sit in the conference until they find the idea that they're going to take action on.

And if they get that within the first hour, they stand up, they walk out of the conference, and they never go back. But they do the thing that they learned about at the conference. And so this approach to learning I think is a basic fundamental idea that figure out the direction you want to go, look for resources that are going to get you there, and don't try to pick the perfect resource.

Accumulate several resources, being careful with your money, of course, to buy the best ones that you know are available, and then use them. And then the ones that are really helpful for you, focus on those. The ones that are less helpful doesn't mean they're bad resources. They just might not be the best resources for you right now at this phase of your journey.

Very good. It makes sense. Okay. Quickly, your question. My third question would be, have you ever tried or thought about using the Kindle app on an Apple device, and then while you're using the text-to-speech, maybe in order to not have to buy the audio book? Yeah. So, again, I'm not particularly budget sensitive.

And I'm not trying to sound elitist, like I just have all the money in the world. I do fine. So I don't need to pinch pennies. But I look at it this way. On things that I want to do, I'm going to spend money on those things. Things that I don't want to do, or things I don't care about, I'm not going to spend money on those things.

So, I mean, like I don't care about vehicles, for example. I drive an old car. I don't care. It's not important to me. And in fact, it would annoy me to have a shiny new car. I lent my car to somebody recently, and it came back with a giant scratch on the side of it.

I take my vehicles, I go to the beach, and I load it up. I had 15 people in my – I have a 15-passenger van now, among other vehicles. And I loaded 15 people in it, and I had a friend who had a bunch of kids, and my children, etc.

And the whole thing was so muddy and disgusting when I got done. But that's why I drive old stuff. So I don't care about cars. But I spend more per year on travel than most people spend on the price of their car. And so I don't skimp when it comes to travel, because that's important to me.

And so, again, I'm not trying to be elitist. What I'm saying is we all should have values, and we should make our budgets reflect our value. If I decide that I'm going to learn a language, and this is something that I want to do, I'm going to go and I'm going to learn the language.

And the cost of a few hundred dollars, I'm not going to penny-pinch to try to save on the cost of a book. And so I have spent hundreds of dollars on German audiobooks. I've spent hundreds of dollars on German books. I've spent hundreds of dollars on different applications and whatnot.

Some of them stick, some of them don't. But I don't worry too much about it, because at the end of the day, the point is to learn German. And it bugs me when people are excessively frugal, and they waste their time. That's my issue with things like you're talking about.

The most valuable thing in your life is not your money. Money is infinite in its quantity. There's plenty of money available. The thing that is not infinite is your time. Your time is what matters. Maybe I'm just getting older, but every day I'm more and more conscious of it.

So it's not that it doesn't matter how we manage our money. It does. I like to have money. I want to have more money, so I don't want to waste it. But at the end of the day, why waste time using an inferior solution if a better solution is there for you?

So to answer the question, have I used Kindle and can I use Kindle? Yes, I can and I do. I use everything. So like Link, for example, works great for me. It doesn't work for the children. They don't push the buttons. So what I do is I buy Kindle books and audible audiobooks, and I spend hours searching and developing my lists trying to figure out what book can I get that is available in the written form with a matching audiobook that's also going to meet my standards.

And once I find them, I buy them, I put them on the Kindle, I use that. And I encourage them to use the Kindle lookup dictionary because that seems to be a good fit for my children. But it's not--I think that having a poverty mindset where there's something you want to do and you're not willing to spend the money on, I think that's a major problem.

If money is that tight, then what you need to do is change the big expenses of your life so that you have enough money to do the things that you want to do. I'm not criticizing you necessarily. I'm just saying in general. What people do is this. They live in an overpriced house.

They drive an overpriced car. They spend all their time and money on big structural issues. They drive 20 miles to work every day, and so I've got to have a reliable car. And they have a big giant car payment, and they eat out all the time, etc. And because of these structural issues in their life, they don't have money to spend on the stuff that they want to do.

What I try to do is I try to fix all the structural stuff. I try to fix and live in a place that I don't care very much. I try to live in a place that's inexpensive. I try to keep my taxes very, very low. I try to keep my car expenses non-existent, and I don't have a lot of other vices or things.

We spend a lot of money on food. That's probably our biggest category. We spend more money on food than almost anything else in our life. And so by fixing those big structural things, when I come to things like language classes or materials, it just doesn't really matter because those are the things that I value, and I've got the structural things right.

So if you're worrying about the cost of a Kindle book, etc., go back and take a look at your structural stuff and see if you can make a big change there. Get rid of an expensive car or move into a cheaper house or fix something else structurally so that you can afford the things that you truly value.

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Don't lose out on your chance to get a Maverick X3. Get Del Amo Motorsports in Redondo Beach and get yours. Offer in soon. See dealer for details. Eric in California, welcome to the show. How can I serve you today? Hi, Joshua. Can you hear me? Yes, sounds good. Great, great.

Awesome. Yeah, long-time listener, first-time caller. I love what you do. I've been a big follower of the fire movement, and I'm deciding whether now is the time to retire from full-time employment. I don't intend to fully retire, but I'd like to continue earning income as a consultant, coach and teacher in my field.

And I'm also interested in spending more time volunteering in my local church community. Also looking to optimize work-life balance and be a great husband and father to two young girls. So based on my based on our prior annual spending and what we have currently invested, I believe we've hit the 25 X level where retirement from W2 employment is feasible.

However, about two thirds of our total net worth outside the home is invested in tax deferred retirement accounts. We also live in a mortgage free home. And so I have two main questions. The first is more technical. But with so much of our net worth tied up in retirement accounts, would you recommend minimizing our exposure to taxes and penalties prior to 59 and a half?

I'm 48. My wife's 45. If you'd like to go through that now and then ask the second question. Go ahead with the second question first, please. The second question is more psychological. Are we truly ready to retire? What's the best way to handle the emotional impact of switching from saving and withdrawing to from saving to withdrawing?

What if the market takes a big hit shortly after we leave the workforce? What if we incur large unexpected emergency expense? This is really more for my wife. She's she's especially nervous about making this transition. And it would be great to ease her concerns before making any big decisions.

Obviously, we need to do this together. Right. How far away? So at the moment, have you submitted your resignation or if you were to submit it, how soon do you anticipate doing that? I would say within the year, within the end of the year. OK. I can answer all of your questions, but they're hard for me to answer in a Friday Q&A show because a proper answer is going to give you a framework.

And that's what I want to give you. But it's hard for me, especially with now four other callers on the line. So here's what I would tell you. I'm not just using this as a chance to promote my newest class, but I am creating an entire course exclusively for you.

And so just yesterday I delivered the first class of my How to Retire Successfully class, and I spent three hours with my students in that class working and going through module one of that class. And module one touches on a lot of these questions you're asking. And then module three is going to be hours of me giving you careful frameworks for every single one of these things I will talk about in that class.

I will talk carefully about the technical questions, taxes, penalties, all of the ways of accessing money, etc. I'll talk about how you know when you can afford to retire, and I'll deal extensively with the psychology of it in great detail. So if you have up to a year, within a few weeks, right now I'm doing the beta version.

Over the next three weeks, the beta version will be finished, and then I will reshoot the course, and it should be available, I would guess, within two months. I've got some extended travel planned, which is going to interrupt my schedule here at the end of June, but within two months that should be available for you.

And as soon as you hear me and see me start to promote it again, buy that course, because it's going to answer in detail every one of these things for you. And you're looking at a decision that is worth – you're looking at a decision that has a price tag of millions of dollars to it.

And so you should be spending hundreds and thousands of dollars to get good advice for your specific situation. So this course is going to be for you in detail and give you much more than about the five to ten minutes I'm about to give you. Now, I want to honor you and, of course, answer your question quickly, so I'm going to focus on just two very simple answers.

Again, I could right now go and give you two hours, but I'm going to give you two answers, and I'm going to limit myself to about three minutes each. Number one, you should never retire from a job until you have a clear vision of what you are retiring to, and you cannot accomplish that thing while also maintaining your job.

One of the hugest mistakes that people make in retirement, be they early retirees or be they traditionally aged retirees, is they quit their job to go to an unproven, unexplored lifestyle. It is a mistake. It's not an irrecoverable mistake, but it is a mistake. You should make certain that you are not retiring from something, but that you are retiring to something, and the thing that you're retiring to should be something that you cannot do and also maintain your job.

Absent that, your default answer to retirement should be, "No, I'm not going to retire." The other aspect is, as I spent in my three-hour session that I taught yesterday, people are many retirees, people who very much care about retirees, many in the FIRE movement, many in the traditional movement, etc.

They have spent so little time imagining and testing and proving out their plans for retirement that they think everything's going to be great, and they're ignorant of the many, many issues and problems they're going to face when they actually pull the trigger and retire. None of this has to do with the actual numbers.

Undoubtedly, you can afford to retire. If you have 25 times your annual income, undoubtedly, you're fine. The question is, what are you going to do? What is your life going to mean? As a man, this is really, really, really important. To stick to my guns of three to five minutes, you want to not be retiring from something.

The goal is not to just quit my job or quit my work. The goal is to retire to something. What am I retiring to? What is that vision? If you have that vision and it's clear, then everything is going to be simpler, and you won't have the psychological uncertainty.

You're always going to have uncertainty when you have a pretty good situation and an unknown that you think is going to be great. But the fact that you're questioning this decision is—I don't want to go too strong because I could be misjudging—but when people are questioning a decision, it's that they haven't spent enough time developing confidence and certainty about what they want to do.

Think of a relationship. You're married. There's a point in time at which you're wondering if you want to marry, and you're wondering if you want to marry this woman. There's a point in time at which you have the confidence that, "Yes, I'm going to do it." And then you go ahead and take the necessary actions to propose and make the marriage happen.

It's a similar thing with retirement. If you're questioning it, then there's a good chance that you're not clear enough on what you're retiring to do because somebody who has a clear plan of, "This is what I'm going to do. I'm going to buy a sailboat, and I'm going to go around the world, and it's going to be January 1, 2024.

That's the plan. I'm on track. I just need to finish my last six months of workout, handle my insurance. We've got to get the boat upfitted. And January 2, I'm on the water." That person doesn't have this questioning that you have. But when you have this questioning spirit or like this, "I'm not so sure," it tells me that you're not clear enough on what you're retiring to.

So your default should be to stick with your job until you have a clear vision of what you're retiring to. Now, also, I said until you can do it and your job is in the way. Jobs provide so much more than just money. And so if you're trying to go to something, well, go to it now and only quit your job when you can't keep the job anymore and keep things going.

So there's just a couple rules of thumb for you to think about. The second question with regard to your distribution question, there is a long technical answer that I can give you on how to get money out of retirement accounts at an early age. We can talk about series of substantially equal periodic payments, the 72(t) rules.

We can talk about the penalty tax. We can talk about all of that stuff. With 80% to 90% certainty, none of that matters for you because you – how old are you right now, Eric? 48. 48. I'll be 48. Okay. None of that really matters because you're going to be making money.

I have not yet met an early retiree who wasn't making money in retirement, and that's one of the big things that I find again and again and again. This whole thing about when you can afford to retire is all in your head. It's not the actual money because what happens is preparing for it, saving money, et cetera, is the thing that causes people to retire.

They have to do that in many cases to feel confident enough to walk away from their work, but what they always find is they can make money. They can make money, and they do make money, and so because of that, they wind up saving far more than they actually ever need, which is probably what you have done.

You've saved more than you actually ever need because I would say that there's a good chance that if you retired this year, two to four years from now, you'd probably be making 30% to 50% to 70% of what you're currently making and having tons of fun doing it. Maybe you'd work two-thirds of the amount of time that you're doing now.

You'd adjust some things, et cetera, and so you don't need to worry too much about the tax penalties, et cetera, because you're probably not going to be taking much money from the 401(k). If you are one of the—I'm guessing based upon my experience. I don't have any data for this, but if you are one of the, say, 20% of people who when they do early retire, they never make any more money, then there is no problem to your tax problem because you're going to be living on such a small amount of money that you're just going to take early distributions from your 401(k).

You're going to pay a 10% penalty tax, and there's not going to be anything more to it, and it's not going to be a big tax bill because you're living on a low lifestyle. You've got a paid-off mortgage. The only way you get to 25 times your income is by living substantially below your means.

Your household spending is probably only a few thousand dollars a month, if that, and so it's just not that much money, and you just pay the 10%, and the 10% penalty tax is lower than everything else, or because you're one of those who's definitely not going to work, you go ahead and set up a 72(t) and eliminate the penalty tax.

So there are good answers to you, and I don't want to sound like I'm being rash or flippant. I'm not. I just don't believe anyone ever actually retires early in the common sense, and I don't think that anybody just doesn't make any money. I don't find it. There's a few of them on Reddit here and there that say they do.

I've known a few people, but my experience is that people are always – you don't flip the switch and be the kind of person who accumulates a fortune through hard work, planning, discipline, dedication, et cetera. You don't flip that switch and then stop making money, and even if you're volunteering and things like that, I think most volunteers, they pretty well quickly find out that most things shouldn't be given away for free.

So I don't want to rant any further, and I feel like I – but take my class, because I'm going to deal with it in careful, organized detail rather than an extemporaneous response. I'm definitely going to be checking it out, yeah. And I totally agree. I have no interest in full retirement.

I'm going to be just like you're saying, probably earning quite a bit of income. There's a good chance I'll never even touch those retirement accounts. But I like to think of it – so a few years ago, I had a job loss during the pandemic. I had a job loss, and I went and consulted for a year and a half, and there was a lot of up and down in the income.

It was very – there was a lot of emotional ups and downs, but on the whole, it was very exciting. It was a lot of fun, and I liked the variety. I loved having the freedom of being able to work when I wanted, where I wanted, and not have to answer to anybody except to deliver the results that my clients expected.

And so that's really what I'm thinking of going back to is going back to that and just knowing that this 25X level of investment is a stable base from which to do that and maybe take it a little easier so I have better balance with my family and not say yes to every client that comes along.

That's really what I'm thinking about more than just straight up retiring. Yeah, and that's – and the reason I know that, the reason I didn't ask you all those questions is because I have spent hundreds and hundreds of hours talking with people just like you, and I find that every single time, it's exactly the same thing that you're saying to me.

And so my answer, the very quick version is simply this. Number one, you should quit your job. You should start the business, start the consulting business, and you should probably do that soon. You should make yourself this promise. Put one year of cash, or you already have an emergency fund, etc., but just give yourself a year of cash so you don't need to make any changes with your investments, and then just say to yourself, "I'm going to promise myself just not to save money anymore." You have plenty of money saved.

So the goal is start a business, start the consulting business, etc., and you now, instead of having to work and save 40% of your income, you need to spend all the money – you're not going to do it, right? But let's just pretend you tell yourself, "I've got to spend all the money I make from consulting, and I can't save any money from it.

I have to just spend it. So I'm going to work enough to provide my living expenses." And if you move yourself into that mental space where you're just working enough to provide your living expenses, then it's such a powerful thing, and it is so much better than the "I'm going to live on the fixed income from my 25 times income of savings," because now if your consulting thing makes you $30,000, you're happy because you paid $30,000.

You made it. You made the money that you needed to keep your food in the fridge and the lights on. On the other hand, if this year you decide to work a little bit more and you make $70,000, well, start spending on some of those nice things. And you could always meter the work that you do and the time that you put into it with your savings.

And so that's one of the strategies every single time. Before I encourage someone to ever retire, what I try to get them to do is to say, "You can't retire completely just because I don't think that's good for you, but do the thing that you're hoping to do, start the business, take the different job, etc., and just set yourself a rule that you're not going to save money anymore." And that'll be a helpful transition point to full retirement if you ever go to it.

And in most cases, that's a superior option because now you can spend with total freedom. You don't have to get involved in the weeds of how am I going to structure my income from my investments. You have zero tax consequences because you'll probably live tax-free running your own business.

Very efficient way to do it. You won't be taking distributions, etc., so you should definitely do that. Just tell yourself, "I'm going to work enough to make my family's living expenses. If I don't make it, no big deal. I'll take a little bit of money, and then I'm not going to save any more money.

I'm going to spend the money on the things that I want to live on." Make sense? Yeah. Yep. That sounds great. Yeah, and it shouldn't be too difficult because I got two young kids, and it's only going to get more expensive. Exactly. Yeah. Take my class, and I promise you it's going to be the best kind of strategic thinking on that subject.

We go to Alabama. Welcome to the show. How can I serve you today? Hey, Joshua. This is Wayne in Birmingham. Can you hear me? Welcome. Sounds good, Wayne. Go ahead. Yeah, great. You and I consulted one time before. I had a question about a book that I was hoping that maybe you had read and that we could get your thoughts about.

It's a book called Die With Zero by Bill Perkins. I'm reading it for the third time because I found it to be so interesting and thought-provoking. First of all, have you any familiarity at all with that book? Yes. Great. Great. Well, I'd like to hear your thoughts about his ideas, if that's possible.

Sure. Real quick, since I'm kind of in a promotional mood, you've consulted with me. Was it a good experience? Was it worth your money? It was excellent. As a matter of fact, I was going to give you a plug. Sorry, I forgot to turn my stuff on. I know what you do.

Yeah, go ahead. You were going to give me a plug. Go ahead. Yeah, I'm sorry. I just did. I was going to say it was very useful, and I got a lot out of it, and I really appreciate that and everything else that you do. Good. So if anyone else is interested in my consulting, when I'm available, you can book it at RadicalPersonalFinance.com/consult.

RadicalPersonalFinance.com/consult. So if I use—I've just pulled up somebody's summary of Perkins' book, so let me just read this summary to keep things concise. And so in the book, "Nine Money Rules for Living Before Dying" from "Die With Zero" by Bill Perkins. Rule number one is maximize your positive life experiences.

Rule number two, start investing in experiences early. Rule three, aim to die with zero. Rule four, use all available tools to help you die with zero. Rule five, give money to your children or to charity when it has the most impact. Rule six, don't live your life on autopilot.

Rule seven, think of your life as distinct seasons. Rule eight, know when to stop growing your wealth. And rule nine, take your biggest risks when you have little to lose. So I have actually not read this book. And the reason I have not read the book is that I'm scared of stealing his stuff because there is so much of an overlap between what I have to say and what he has to say.

And I try not to steal—I try not to steal other people's stuff. And so I have not read this book. I knew the day I read the title and the subtitle that it was—that it was—that I agreed with the basic concept. And I knew that I would probably have a lot of alignment.

But I have not read the book. I have seen a couple of summaries to prove to myself that, "Yeah, I know what's in there," et cetera. But I don't want to steal his stuff. And so I fully agree with what I've read about in the summaries. And I don't think there's any long-term listener of radical personal finance that would be surprised by my agreement.

Rule one, maximize your positive life experiences. To me, life is the key and the focus of life, meaning do—living is the point. And one of the great dangers of money and focusing on money is that money is measurable in a way that experience is not. And so for those of us who really get into money, one of the great appeals of it is to focus on the dollars because we can—because it's math.

And we can put nice charts, Excel spreadsheets together, and it's exciting. And so I haven't talked about this publicly, and I don't know if he discusses this in this book, but one of the strategies that I try to employ in my own life is I try to add metrics to the things that I'm doing in my life.

And so how do you maximize—how do we measure experiences? And so years ago, I did a show on talking about budget categories, and I focused in that show on how to do personal budgeting. So there's some categories you want to decrease, some categories you want to increase, and you need to have those things labeled appropriately.

And so I have charts and things like that that I track of how many minutes am I spending with my wife and children? How many countries did we go to this year? How many peak experiences can I have and can I put in? Because I want to focus on spending money on experiences, but if you just see your balance sheet go down or you just see your income statement wiped out with too much of expense, it feels like a waste.

But if you can develop some kind of metric for maximizing the experiences, then I think that's really good. Rule two, start investing in experiences early. I have always done that, and I have tried to—I've seen the value of it. I'm not nearly as rich as I could be if I hadn't spent—if I hadn't developed life experience with experiences.

But I feel like I've lived a very rich life. I didn't have tons of money when I was younger, but I mean I've been places I never should have been. I mean in terms of the life—the money that I had. I've had experiences that are so rich. And I feel like those things are integral to who I am today.

And I do encourage and will encourage my children to develop that sense of personal experience. I was just going through my list of podcast ideas, and I have a podcast outline on this. I've mentioned previously that young people today are just so bereft of experience. Here I am, sounding like an old man.

But it's really true. They're so bereft of experience that they don't have any—like they don't have enough life experience to draw on. And you need to get out and have diversity of experience and do it early. Rule three, aim to die with zero. I have believed this and taught this for a very long time.

And I think that in the same way that I went through the long series on investing in children, I think you should invest in children when they're young. I think that you should give your money away to children when they're alive. I said that many times over the 10 years of Radical Personal Finance.

I think that you should give your money to children when you can see them enjoy it and you can enjoy it with them. I don't think there's any point in having big, giant inheritances, et cetera. If you're going to give money away to charity, do it when you're alive, when you can supervise that.

I did a show some weeks back on that. Don't leave a giant bequest in your will to some charity. Give it away while you are alive. His rule four, use all available tools to help you die with zero. I would guess that he talks through some of the things that are available.

I have been planning over the last few weeks. I haven't done it yet. But I'm a huge fan of annuities because annuities are one of the most important tools that solve this issue. They help you to create an income for yourself that you cannot outlive, but they make sure that you don't have a bunch of excess money left over when you die.

I'm not a big fan or promoter of things like reverse mortgages, but I don't want to own any real estate when I die. When I die, I want to be living in a small apartment in one of my children's houses, and that the day they die, they have a couple of boxes of things to pass along.

But I want to pass all that stuff along when I'm alive. I want my accounts to be simple and to be clean and to have everything disposed of within a few days. I don't want mansions and property and cars and all that stuff. I want to die with zero myself, and that includes property, etc.

There's a thing about Swedish death cleaning, I think. Somebody wrote a book. I haven't read the book. I just read the title, and I got all I needed from the title. But I guess evidently, allegedly, by virtue of this title, is all I know about it, is that there's a tradition in Sweden that you do your own cleanup before you die, and you take care of your stuff.

And I think that's something that should be normal in all cultures. And so that should happen with financial affairs. That should happen with everything else as well. His rule five, give money to your children or charity when it has the most impact. I feel like he's stealing my stuff.

Rule six, don't live your life on autopilot. I don't know all that he talks about that, but this is a huge focus for me, is that I want--and again, in this class I taught yesterday for my retirement class, a huge point I made, this session was called "Obviating Retirement," to render retirement unnecessary.

But one of the big passions that I have is take your life and add texture to it. Actually, his rule seven, think of life as distinct seasons. Take your life and add texture to it. Don't see it as my working and my retirement. That's stupid. Create themes for your years and themes for your decades, et cetera, and embrace the season of life that you're in and recognize that there are times to engage with activities and engage with financial decisions and times to not.

I have said this publicly over the past months, but I see myself right now as not being in a phase of life in which I particularly want to save much money. I'm not denying the importance of still making sure I'm not destitute when I'm old. We don't want to be old with zero.

We want to die with zero. But I don't see the point of my accumulating millions of dollars by being niggardly with my money now. This is the point where I need to focus now on being generous with money and not pinching every penny so hard until it stops. This is the point.

These are the years right now, especially in my lifestyle as a father, with my children, that I want to make sure that I'm engaging with them on a deep level. Down the road, there will be plenty of time for more savings, etc., and thankfully, by focusing on a high income, you don't have to choose.

But if you did have to choose, think about the different seasons of your life in which it makes sense to do it. Then rule eight, know when to stop growing your wealth. I don't know his whole point, although I would say that I don't think that you need to stop growing your wealth because I think that work is a healthy human activity.

So if he's talking about working and retiring just because you can, I'm not in favor of that. But in terms of wealth, of taking that money and investing it into things that matter, I do have a great passion for that. Piling up more money for the sake of having a bigger balance sheet, to me, is a foolish goal.

But making more money so that you can invest into the world and be a steward of it and change your community, change your family, etc., those things are important. And then his rule nine, take your biggest risks when you have little to lose. I agree with that. I don't know of anyone that disagrees with it.

So I haven't read the book, but I'm sure that we have a huge level of overlap, and you can be the judge of that because you've read the book a few times. Yeah, you absolutely do. And so I'm not surprised at all to hear you say that. But yeah, you guys are saying almost exactly the same thing.

And also, you anticipated another question I had about annuities, because he does talk about that. I was going to ask you if you had any thoughts about it, so I'm glad to hear that there is a place for those too. A variable annuity is one of the most--for people who don't have large pensions, a variable annuity is one of the best possible tools for taking a huge lump sum of retirement savings and making sure that you don't outlive it.

I don't sell annuities. I haven't had an insurance license in ten years now. So I don't have a skin in the game. Annuities are very difficult because they are so missold so many times. And I need to--again, I started actually recording this last week. I was going down my podcast ideas.

I was like, "I've got to do this annuity show." I recorded about 15 minutes, then I canned it and skipped it. So I'll get that done soon. I was doing it because I was preparing my session in my retirement course on annuities. But I have very, very frequently encouraged people to--what we do is we sum up the amount of Social Security that someone has, if they have another pension, et cetera.

I have very, very frequently encouraged people to take a large lump sum of money, put it into a variable annuity with a variable income plan where it's invested in stocks, and that allows them to be certain that they're going to have the income that they need for their time, for the fullness of their life, and that they're going to have the--it's going to be--keep pace with inflation, which is the most important thing.

And that allows them then to take the balance of their money and dole it out in large lump sum amounts. And that is what so many retirees struggle with. If you're sitting there looking at $4 million in mutual funds, you never know how much to spend. But if you take a million or a million and a half or whatever the number is to get you the income that's appropriate, and you buy an annuity with it, now the goal is over the next 30 years, take two and a half million, and the goal is to run out over the next 30 years.

So you don't do it all up front. You wait for the stock market to rise, et cetera, and you try to time your sales. But if you want to go ahead and spend a couple extra hundred thousand dollars, go ahead, because the goal is by the time you arrive at genuine old age, by the time you arrive in your genuine no-go years, then at that point in time, you want to have depleted all of those mutual fund accounts, either through giving them, investing them into people, giving them away, giving them to children, et cetera, investing them into experiences and memories and things like that.

Those accounts should be empty. And you have enough income coming in that's going to see you through to the end. And then usually there's a buffer amount. There's a buffer with the house that I have that's there. And then we do need to make sure that if you do desire to leave money to your children, that there's assets earmarked for that.

And so we might have a life insurance policy from when we were young or a house or a trust or something like that. But we've got to help people to spend their money, because many wealthy retirees dramatically underspend the amount of money that they're capable of, and it's very sad.

Well, Joshua, that's fantastic. Thank you so much for all that information. I would love it if you did a detailed show about annuities, but thanks again. All right. It's on the list. I may, I have to be careful not to make promises that I don't always keep, but I can do it, and we'll see.

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Don't lose out on your chance to get a Maverick X3. Visit Delamo Motorsports in Redondo Beach and get yours. Offer in soon. See dealer for details. Christopher in California, you're up next. How can I serve you today? Hey, Joshua. How's it going? Very well, sir. You hear me all right?

Yep, sounds good. Go ahead. Okay. So I'm looking at Argentina and they're in hyperinflation, and I don't quite understand. Is there an opportunity there then if their currency has gone down 90% compared to the dollar in the past five years? Does that mean all assets there are like 90% cheaper now?

It sounds like such a simple question. The answer is yes and no. So Argentina, Venezuela, etc. Argentina has hyperinflation seemingly around every five years. Just the last couple of few decades have been a nightmare. So the answer is yes, you can buy assets cheaper and there are opportunities. So right now, Venezuela, I think probably is a pretty decent opportunity for people who want to go in, buy a house in a little town.

You can buy a mansion for $100,000, things like that. The price never goes to zero like many people imagine. It's never that things become worthless because when a currency itself becomes worthless, the people start doing business in another currency and things are valued in another currency. So if the Argentinian currency has experienced hyperinflation, either they chop off some zeros, do a currency reset, etc.

or people just denominate their lives in terms of the US dollar which is a stable currency. And so the US dollar becomes the basic currency of choice. Argentina can offer a great lifestyle. You can have a great house. You can buy assets, things like that. The issues that are dangerous, why doesn't everybody do it and why shouldn't everybody do it are a few fold.

One, when you have hyperinflation or an economic collapse, you get everything else that goes with an economic collapse. That means major issues in the security situation generally, crime goes up massively, lives become cheap and you're worried about your personal security and then also you're worried about the security of your stuff.

And so Argentina has nationalized all kinds of businesses. There's all kinds of opportunity in Argentina. Argentina has the best geography of any country in South America, the best opportunities, but they've also nationalized everything. And so to get a foreign company to go in and start buying assets again is very, very difficult and they've got a lot of work to do to convince people that they should do it.

Same thing happened in Venezuela. So you can go and get great deals in a place that has experienced hyperinflation, but the problem is can you stay there yourself because of security concerns? Are you going to keep your stuff? And I guess the other issue is can you get your money out?

I've been working with a consulting client right now who is from Argentina and this client received as an inheritance a house from her father and she's been trying to sell it. Number one, the house is worth a quarter of what it was. So it's still a decent house. It was a nice house, etc.

But nobody can buy it because of those issues and she can't get the money out. So even if she could sell the house, she can't get the money out because of the capital controls. And so you're kind of stuck and that's why in my course on my economic collapse course, that's why I talk about the importance of planning ahead because when a country goes into an economic crisis, they impose capital controls and the whole thing falls apart, which is why you're better off not being there.

And if you're going to buy stuff there, you need to have a good long-term viewpoint on using it. Okay. Yeah. So you mentioned you have an economic collapse course. I haven't heard about that one yet. I've stuttered for a moment because I have, I just was trying to remember, I had a course called How to Survive and Thrive During the Coming Economic Collapse and I pulled that one and I reinterpreted it and pulled it apart.

And so in the How to Survive and Thrive During the Coming Economic Collapse course, I pulled, so I talked about two basic strategies. And the two strategies that I see to survive and thrive in an economic collapse are number one, physical preparedness and number two, being prepared to run, being prepared to go where there is no collapse and crisis.

And so I sold that course for several years, had lots of students, I really loved the course, but I decided it would be better served by my splitting it up. And so I cut it out and I cut out all of the stuff of going elsewhere and I've rebranded that one and retaught it as International Skate Plan.

So that you can buy at internationalskateplan.com. What I have not done is I have not redone the physical preparedness portion of it. I have not kind of put it into a prepping class. I sold the prepping class. I had a good number of students for it, but I just felt like it wasn't my core.

I don't know. I may do it again. It's on the list of courses. It's on the list that I may re-release it. So that's why I said about it. So I used to sell it as how to survive and thrive during the coming economic crisis. Now, if you go to internationalskateplan.com, you can buy that one today.

And internationalskateplan.com basically teaches you why and how every wealthy Argentinian or wealthy Venezuelan, unless you were a core part of the insiders who could keep the businesses or profit from keeping it, why you were better off going to Miami than you were staying in Argentina or Venezuela. Okay. So do you think the international skate plan would be a good place for me to start if I was curious?

It just seems like the opportunity to buy low is, I'm not sure. I'd be interested in real estate primarily, whether that be land or a vacation home, a secondary home near Patagonia, Bariloche, or somewhere similar. Those places aren't going away. So is it an opportunity to maybe get a vacation, secondary home down there?

And I'm not sure if those real estate assets then really have gone. Are they, five years ago, were they 90% more expensive than they are today? Or do they just adjust their purchase price in US dollars based off of how far down their currency is devalued? You'll need to go and get personalized information and talk to people locally and see what you can find.

Okay. If you are comfortable with Argentina, I think it's a great value place. I mean, I get a little jealous of the Argentinian beef. I think frequently I should move to Southern Argentina. And the wine and the beef, etc., it can be great. So there are options and there are possibilities.

And so I think you should pursue it. You sound interested enough that you should pursue it. I can't myself wave a blanket statement and say all my listeners should go there because you have to have comfort, familiarity, you have to want to be there. If you want to be there and you want to have a house for the coming decades, go there and buy, definitely.

The thing I caution people when investing in a place like Latin America, now Argentina is different, huge economy, huge country, etc., one of the gems of South America. But what I often tell people is you need to understand that everything works differently than what you're accustomed to in a place like the United States.

And so people who have property, if the property, if the currency declines in value, they don't necessarily sell it for 90% off any more than you yourself would sell the house that you live in in the United States if the house value has plummeted by 90%. You would just stay there and you would say it's a house, I'm just going to keep it.

I don't need the 10%, I'm just going to keep it. And so the only reason someone's going to sell when there has been a collapse is if that person needs to sell. And so you have to do the same basic function of finding the deals that are available and then negotiating them in a way that works out.

But yes, you can, Argentina's been hurt and if you know some areas that you like, you have interest in it, and if you have a long-term perspective, I think that Argentina probably has very good prospects over the coming decades. They just got to fix their political and economic issues and they haven't been able to fix those in the past few decades, so there's no reason for me to expect that this is the decade they're going to be fixing it.

I don't know, I'm not involved. Okay, great. Thank you, Joshua. Do you have time for one more separate question? Sure, go ahead. Yeah, I look at TU as definitely a great source of information, especially traveling with kids. I've got three young kids and I've got a military deployment coming up that I'm going to bring my family along with me.

We're going to Germany, so I'm going to be there for four months and going to have this family out there with me, plan on taking the opportunity to travel around Europe. I'm in the reserve, so my full-time job is I fly for UPS and as a commercial pilot, it's very flexible where I could, there's literally people that live all around the world and commute back to Louisville to fly their schedule.

It's basically 14 days on, 14 days off kind of schedules. I half-kiddingly joked with my wife saying, "If we like it over there while we're in Germany, we could just stay." But I don't know if that's actually true. I'm sure there's some visa stuff. I know the tourist visa only lasts for 90 days.

If we were more interested, I say it because my kids are young, they're seven, four, and three. I think it'd be a good opportunity to still do that. We have lived overseas before. I lived in Cyprus for two years with the military. I'm just wondering, we've lived overseas before.

I think it's a good time to do it while the kids are young still. A sidebar on that as well, I've become a little bit more interested in homeschooling my kids because as I've seen my daughter in first grade, every time school is out because of a snowstorm or whatever, she brings her Chromebook home and I can finish her homework in an hour.

Everything that she had, her entire curriculum in an hour. I'm like, "What are you doing at school all day if I can finish all this in an hour?" Those are some of my thoughts going into it and just curious what you think about maybe pursuing that opportunity or not.

If you were going to move abroad today, where would you go? Would you go to Argentina? Would you go to Germany? Would you go to Portugal? Would you go to Mexico? Where would you go? If I were to move abroad, I'd probably go to a Spanish-speaking country like Mexico or South America.

And then the question you're just kind of asking for my general thoughts on what you've described or did you have a specific question to ask? I don't really have a specific question. That's just general what you think. So I would beg you to pull your daughter out of school and homeschool her.

That I would do. I just think it's crazy to waste a seven-year-old's time in that kind of environment. I can certainly understand why somebody would enroll a 12-year-old in school, a 13-year-old, a 15-year-old, etc. I see the great value in that where you're trying to engage. Those are years where you're starting to build a social network, etc.

But a seven, life is so precious for a seven-year-old. Those years are so precious for them to be crushed in an industrial school system. It's just so demoralizing. And what it will do is right now she's sweet and she loves learning, etc. And if she spends the next five years in the industrial school system, by the time she's 12, she's going to be a nasty typical 13-year-old.

I don't want to learn. I don't want to read. It introduces all kinds of problems into your life. And so if you can pull her out at this point in time and keep learning magical, then even if you do enroll her into a school like that down the road, at least she comes in with a greater spark, a greater appreciation, and a focus of learning.

And I think that's such a great gift that you can give to a child. And so there's zero, at seven years old, there's zero reason to be thinking about academic, long-term academic qualifications. There's zero reason of any official curriculum that you need to follow. None of that stuff matters at the age of 12.

Sorry, at the age of seven. And so I would beg you, pull her out and give her at least five years of magic, of her being able to be taught very carefully, her being able to study the things that she wants to do, nurture her love of reading, her love of learning, travel around the world with her, do that stuff for at least the next five years.

And then if you look at it and you say, "You know what? We need to make sure that at this point in time she needs to be more conventional and we've got to mold her to be like everyone else," then make a different decision. Judy Arnall in her book "Unschooling to University," which is probably the best book I've read on unschooling, that I've read anyway, she makes the point about unschoolers.

She talks about how when unschoolers go into the classroom, they often--unschoolers will often go into the classroom in their high school years, sometimes in college, et cetera. They basically come in with that like dewy-eyed freshness that a kindergartner has. And they often just thrive in that kind of environment because unlike being ground down by the industrial school system for the last 10 years, they're brand new to it.

And so they come in with those fresh faces and fresh attitudes, et cetera, and they can often thrive in that environment and learn a ton at the end of the high school years and in college, et cetera, if that winds up being a good solution. So homeschooling rant over.

But that--I would beg you to do it. If you have the flexibility that you've described, then you should, I would say, embrace the travel for a time. That's what to me you're in a precious stage where you don't need to worry about your kids' commitments. When you've got a 15-year-old and a 13-year-old and an 11-year-old, now you have to think more carefully about them and what's right for them and how are they going to connect with their career interests and now their schools and their hobbies and their jobs, et cetera.

And that stuff is genuinely important at that stage. At 7 years old, none of that matters. It's all irrelevant. And so my answer would be while you're in Germany, get an interrail pass-- or sorry, your rail for US citizens. Get a URail pass and kids travel free on the trains with a URail pass and use your time just to train all around Europe and get a good sense of everything that's there.

And then if you're interested in traveling to-- or you would be interested and open to living in some of the other places, then go and just check them out. Don't worry too much about any immigration stuff unless you want a plan B. If you take my international escape plan and you want to do some immigration stuff, you should do it.

By the way, if you're interested in Mexico, that's your obvious second thing. Go get a residency in Mexico. There's the podcast that I did on that a couple of years ago that explains all those details. Mexico is the best second residency option, bar none, for Americans, no ifs, ands, or buts.

So you should definitely do that. There's no downside to that. But go and travel. And so go spend a few months in Argentina. And if you want to-- one of the great things about Argentina, especially if you like it and if you're interested in those areas, you could nationalize in Argentina fairly quickly.

And Argentina has a lot going for it as a country, as a culture, as a place to be, as being in that southern cone. Argentina has a great literature culture. The Argentinians are readers. Because of the intense European influence with all of the Italian and Germans and whatnot that have settled there over the years, it's got a totally different feel in many places than Mexico or Panama, et cetera, do.

It's a really special place. And so I think go check it out. And then if you wanted to nationalize in Argentina, it's a fairly easy place to get a residency permit. It's a fairly fast path to citizenship. And as long as you don't take all of your affairs to Argentina and you keep most of your stuff in the U.S., I think that would be a smart move.

Okay. Thank you, Joshua. Very helpful. And I'm going to look into your international escape plan more and hopefully take that in the near future. I'd love to have you. Internationalescapeplan.com. Andy in Indiana, welcome to the show. How can I serve you today? Hey, Joshua. Thanks for taking my call.

I would like to, in the spirit of promoting your work that has been going today, say I've taken I think all of your classes and would recommend all of them and done consulting with you and found that very valuable. And the only thing I'd add to what's already been said is just I think the consulting is especially valuable for, I think it was Eric that called earlier and said, "I'm not sure what to think about this.

I'm a little uncomfortable." I think that you do a fantastic job in personal consulting of drilling down into somebody's numbers, not putting everything out in public. You're able to get into that and just make -- was able to make me feel much more comfortable that, hey, I think this is true and it's well worth the money to get a professional opinion to say, yes, you're doing correct math, you're thinking right, like you're not crazy, this will work.

So definitely recommend those. Thank you. I appreciate that very much. And as far as a question or comment, I was actually calling to prompt you to talk a little more on your show a couple weeks ago about not starting a nonprofit. I found that really good and helpful thinking.

And basically the two kind of follow-up questions I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on are, A, do you have any other organizational structures in mind besides a nonprofit or a business? Like can you speak at all to maybe co-ops or things of that nature? And then, B, I think the comments you made made a ton of sense on a foundation to cure cancer or a foundation to, I think you used the example of Moe Widows Lawns or things like that.

Do you think that same critique applies to nonprofits that are focused around basically owning assets and acquiring insurance? So religious institutions, churches, Boy Scouts, little league groups, that sort of thing, would you make the same critique of that sort of entity using nonprofits versus some other structure? Good questions both.

Very kind of you to take a big softball and lob it up in the air at me. I appreciate that. So let's start with question number one as far as other organizational structures. Where to go with that? I guess in general, the most powerful form of structure is non-structure.

The most powerful form of coordination or organization is decentralization. Now obviously that doesn't work for everything, but I think that we underestimate the power of an idea many times. One of the things that I have tried to do with my work at Radical Personal Finance is to focus on ideas, and I have tried to do that because I believe that ideas are very powerful, and if someone has the idea, they can take it and they can apply it in an appropriate way in their localized context.

So I think some of the most powerful ways to change the world is not to start organizations but to start with an idea. Now obviously I'm not going to skip past even religious ideas like Christianity. Being a Christian, I follow a guy who lived thousands of years ago, and when that guy was here on earth, he founded no organization, no institution, nothing.

He just spent his time with people preaching, and then when he left, he left a bunch of teenagers and perhaps a few early 20-year-olds who had just a few weeks earlier had abandoned him and completely abandoned everything, and they took those ideas to the ends of the world to the point where today virtually the entirety of the world is shaped and is being shaped by the ideas and the principles and the teachings of that man, Jesus Christ.

And a plurality of the world's citizens say that they are acolytes and followers of that man, and today, even in an American context, even all of the enemies of Christ and Christianity use his ideas to try to defeat his teachings. And so they have to borrow from his ideas, and so the world has been upended and transformed by ideas, and I would say more than that.

I don't want to just negate the spiritual reality of that, and it's just getting started. It's only getting started because ideas are powerful. And when we look at an organization, a decentralized organization like the Christian Church, what's so interesting about it is every single time a tyrant has come along and tried to whack off the heads of all of the people and put them in prison and stick them up in his garden as torches and all the stuff, what happens is because the Church is decentralized, it survives, and in some cases it thrives.

Not always, but it survives and it presses forward because of the decentralized nation, decentralized idea. And so I think that decentralization is one of the most important principles to promote whenever possible. And while we may not be able to promote it in all cases, we should always be trying to promote it, and we should be trying to connect people not to ourselves as individuals or to an organization, but to the cause, to the idea.

If you study... I don't need to give five more examples. So in terms of overall organizational structure, I would say that we should only impose structure where it's truly and genuinely necessary, and we should often look for the unstructured or the decentralized position as being superior. So this leads me to number two.

You said, "What about organizations that are there for insurance purposes?" I'll answer that first. So in terms of starting an organization for an insurance purpose, I'm perfectly fine with that. If you need insurance, we need a bank account, we have an organization, we've got to buy insurance, fine, go ahead and get it.

Or if we need a bank account for a certain thing, then form an entity and do it. Or if we're going to give a large financial contribution and the government will let us deduct it, let's do it. I do think the same caution that I said in that show still applies.

We do it too much. Why go and get an organization and have insurance if we can just do it as individuals, because it creates so many problems. This angers me so much when I see resources being wasted. I think churches are often guilty of this, organizations, but they go and they say, "Well, we've got to have insurance." Now granted, maybe you do have to have insurance, but they go and have a beautiful van.

Well, now we have to impose all kinds of rules about who can and can't drive the van. So every single time you expose yourself to organization, you expose yourself to more rules, to more things that keep it. Then you get these giant calcified organizations that know you can't use our building because now we've got a bunch of government regulations of what we can do.

Or we have to host this conference that we disagree with, because if we don't provide our public service, then we're going to lose our tax-funded, our tax-free thing, etc. Whereas if people would retain full control and just do things as people, they would be able to be much more effective.

I have a van. I own a van. If someone wants to borrow my van, I give them a van. Now, is there a – I let them drive my van. Is there a risk to that? Yeah, there can be. I don't want to be foolish about risk that my property gets used.

But you watch an organization and what starts with a powerful bunch of fire-breathing people who are going to go out and change the world, and a few years later, they're spending all their time saying, "How are we going to raise money for insurance?" or "We can't do that," or "That doesn't fit our values," etc.

And so I would apply the same critique to a lot of those organizations that I would the other. Now, things like Boy Scouts or Scouts of America – I don't know. BSA, I guess, is what they're called now. On the one hand, you have this huge organization that was such a win for so many people.

And I always used to go and read all the Boy Scout manuals and say, "What a great solution." But what they became was kind of basically diminishing the fullness of the failure of organization. And so they collapsed as an organization. They fell apart. They ended up in all kinds of controversy.

And today, they alienate the very people they would want to do. They betrayed all of the founders' original principles. And it angers me, myself, because I have four sons, and I would dearly love them to have been taught Boy Scout stuff, but I can't go anywhere near the organization anymore.

So I can go and find all the manuals from years ago and try to create something myself, but it's kind of a cautionary tale. I think we need to be very careful, especially when we talk about churches. So this is going to be probably pretty inflammatory, so buckle your britches.

We're all men here. But churches – number one, let's begin with the truth. Okay, number one. Churches in the United States – I'm not talking on a global basis, but churches in the United States should never organize as 501(c)(3) organizations. People do this – I see churches do it all the time, and it's crazy.

Should not organize as 501(c)(3) organizations. They say they do it because of the tax code. They haven't read it. Churches in the United States are tax-exempt entities by virtue of being churches. There's no further form of organization needed. And so churches should not be 501(c)(3) organizations, in my opinion.

There's probably some counter-arguments that I should give to talk about the situations, but it frustrates me when churches and preachers and Christians bow the knee to Caesar in a wrong way and go out and bring all of these requirements on themselves that are unnecessary. Churches in the United States have no need to be structured as 501(c)(3)s.

When churches build structure, what they do is they give up their ability to grow. And I look at the issues, and to me it's so obvious. So if you look at the organic nature of Christian churches, where they form because people believe in a cause, believe in an idea, and they gather together in free association, there is a beauty and there's a life and there's a freedom to that.

Then what happens is they start to grow, people added, etc. The leadership starts to form, and then they create an organization. And they go and they buy a building, and they create a business entity. And all of the growth stops, because then it becomes this calcified structure. And then instead of the church growing madly and doubling and tripling and whatnot, it can just become, "Well, we're happy that we baptized eight people last year." And if many churches would just simply chop themselves in six, and they would teach leadership instead of having a centralized organization, then they would be growing so much more.

And in the West especially, we have such a shameful heritage that we have got to fix. In this day and age, and a lot of it is because instead of the church, which is a free organization of people who believe in an idea and who want to gather together in simple fellowship, and then they go out and the individuals can go and do their work, then we create these giant organizations and go to Europe and see where it ends.

I went into a nightclub years ago in Europe that was in a beautiful church. That's where it ends. Beautiful church building, I mean. The church was gone centuries ago, and now it's a nightclub. And so that centralized structure, apologies to all of my Catholic and Orthodox friends, but I see that as it's a guaranteed failure in the long run.

Whereas the organic living church, which is complete and separately and independent from each other, has the opportunity to grow, and that's what's changing the world. Now within that, I think it's smarter for individuals to do their own thing. And so if somebody wants to start a ministry and they want to have a thing, let's put an individual in charge of it and let that individual do it, and then you have freedom and flexibility for the individual.

And ideally the individual will have accountability, will have boards and things like that, but none of that needs to be on paper. None of it needs to be directed and organized. When the pandemic came on, a lot of churches around the world closed their doors. I never once stopped meeting with people a single time because there's nothing there that the cops could come and shutter the doors.

And I think that people who don't appreciate the importance of decentralization, they're playing with fire and they always wind up getting burned. So I do believe there are times when we should form organizations. I do believe that there are structures that we can use, etc., but I think we should be very, very, very skeptical of them and only implement those things when we don't see another option and we really should only implement them on a temporary basis until we can get back to something that's stronger and more robust, where individuals and small communities have responsibility and authority rather than giant centralized institutions that are under the government's thumb.

Very good, thank you. What do you think? I'll follow up that. I guess where I maybe am, I wonder, because I tend to think similarly that decentralization is great, but then I look at something like, you know, great cathedrals in Europe and maybe, you know, they've fallen now, but for hundreds of years they were wonderful, beautiful structures that brought, you know, a lot of joy and beauty into the world.

Or, you know, you mentioned the scouts and I'd say I feel about the same way about it today, but for 95 or 100 years it did really well and I can't point to another man's completely decentralized work from 100 years ago that I can say with certainty has touched as many young people.

So, I guess I'm pretty sympathetic to that thought and I think maybe more decentralization is better today, but I don't know, do you have any thoughts on maybe if all organizations fail, but they're good while they last? Right, I actually share and I try to give strong opinions when I feel them and not hedge too much, but I share that frustration about things like cathedrals.

Being a very, I guess in some ways, typical Protestant, I was dismissive of those things in the past. I thought, "Ah, what does it matter? I have a cathedral and whatnot." But as I've grown older, I've come to appreciate the beauty of a town that's organized around a cathedral.

I've come to appreciate the beauty of physical expressions in a way and I'm a lot less critical than I once was. And so maybe even what I said, maybe I was too critical. I don't want to be critical, but I guess I can't answer that and maybe it's a good example of something that I'm not sure, but it's just a farce, right?

When you look at Notre Dame, when Notre Dame burns and you look at what Notre Dame represents, it's a farce to think that that building, which was built and designed by men who wanted to give testament to the glory of God. By the way, for the record, Gothic architecture is my favorite form of architecture.

I love it. I love beautiful Gothic structures. I walk into the cathedrals and raise my eyes up, but it's just a farce. To say that it has a religious impact today is a farce. Now, maybe we can regain it, recapture it. Maybe 500 years from now, we will have succeeded in completely transforming and they'll once again be the center of religious life, etc.

But to me, it's a hollow and empty shell and how can we say that it in and of itself is powerful? Now, back to Boy Scouts. I think we should also be careful about judging based upon where we are today. So, go back to Baden... What was his name?

Simpson Powell? >>TED: Baden Powell. >>ADAM: Okay, Baden Powell. So, if we go back to Baden Powell and we think about the era in which he lived, how were you going to get things out? How were you going to get ideas out and organize if you didn't create an organization and create a structure?

And so, there's a big difference between when he started versus today. And things like the Boy Scouts, while they were an institution, an organization, the size of the institution, the organization was probably nothing like what we think of today as an organization and as an institution. And so, if somebody has an idea and they want to create...

The process of centralization and organization is a natural, obvious process. You begin with an idea and you say, "Here's the idea. We need to start connecting people." So, you create an organization where there's registration and people connect each other. And then you start publishing literature and manuals, etc. And then you want to organize and connect people.

And that's fine. But there's a big difference between back then versus now in terms of our ability to get an idea out. And so, the pathway to organization and centralization is obvious and you could understand why men make the decisions they do. They made the best decisions they knew of at the time based upon the information they had and where they thought they would wind up.

And I believe that institution building is something that we should be... I don't want to be dismissive of institution building because when we want to make an impact on the world, we need to build institutions on occasion. And so, that's why I'm not tearing into institutions. I'm not tearing into organizations or organization per se.

A large company needs organization. And as a large gathering of people, a large grouping of people needs organization. What I was primarily trying to focus on and what I'm still trying to focus on is, number one, not-for-profit is not morally superior to for-profit. In fact, not-for-profit in many applications is morally inferior because it means that the end solution is not going to happen for that cause.

I'm not saying that not doing things for money is morally superior to not doing them for money. I'm saying that if you want to change something by automatically going to a not-for-profit as a structure for that, in many cases, that results in the person not having the change they need because somebody chose an institution that it was not durable, that was not going to change over time.

And then secondarily, my point was that when you start an organization, you are automatically building something that can be calcified, that you can lose control of, etc. And so, we should be skeptical about it and only do it when and where necessary. So, if building an institution is a good idea, great, let's do it.

If centralization is necessary, let's do it. But let's be really careful in how we apply it and let's be skeptical of it. And when being skeptical, I think we'll make better decisions. I've reached a point in my life in which I have a ladder in the shed and I'm skeptical of going up on the ladder.

I'm not going to throw the ladder out because if I need to go up on the roof, I'm going to go up on the roof. But I look at the ladder a few times and I want to make sure that if I'm going to go up on that ladder, that I'm not likely to fall off the top of the building and I'm going to be super careful while doing it.

So, to pardon the silly metaphor, but to me, that's the point. Here's a tool, this is a genuinely important tool, but I'm not going to rush to get the ladder and go play around on a ladder every morning. That's a dumb thing. I'm going to use it when and where I need it and I'm going to be skeptical of it and I'm going to quickly put it away in the shed when I'm done with it.

Thanks, that's a good metaphor. I wish I had more to say. I guess I've hedged off of what I said a moment ago, but I believe institutions have their place, but the men who create institutions had better have a plan for making sure that either that institution has governance that will not betray the vision of its founders or that the institution is very focused on something.

Because if you look around the world today, everything from Boy Scouts of America or whatever they are now, BSA, whatever, to Harvard University, to the ACLU, it's very hard to recognize the founders' ideals and principles in the institution that exists today. And the same critique applies to Christian institutions as well in many churches.

Sometimes you look at it and you say it's very hard to recognize the founders' vision in this particular institution. So we should factor that in and look for a new better way so that when our descendants are talking about this in the year 3023, that they can look back and they can say, "Well, we learned some things that worked and we learned some things that didn't work and we figured out a better way to do it." And that's got to start with us identifying the problems, I guess is my point.

Fair enough? Great. Thank you. Thank you for the questions. I didn't go further in the show that I did because I didn't know how to go further. I wanted to register those two warnings and then I don't know, maybe a decade from now I'll have better thoughts on it.

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Don't lose out on your chance to get a Maverick X3. Visit Delamo Motorsports in Redondo Beach and get yours. Offer in soon. See dealer for details. We close out today with the state of Washington. Welcome to the show. How can I serve you today? All right. I have also consulted with you and I'm still working on action items from that meeting back in wintertime, so you will get plenty to do with my portion of the plug.

Definitely worth it. Been a good day for self-promotion. Thank you, guys. Yeah, man. You keep the plugs going. Anyway, I actually had a couple of questions since you did just get done with your last round of consulting. This is kind of a I think these two questions kind of go together and I've got another one.

If you have time, we've been on the phone for a while. So in your backlog, there's a show where you counseled a young man running some sort of animal farm. I think he was farming like donkeys or alpacas or something. And his his I believe father hired you to counsel him.

And I'm curious if you're still doing that or if that was something you were doing at the beginning of your show to keep things rolling. And then additionally, you also speak about ongoing business consulting relationships that you have. And I'm curious what your minimums are, what type of business consulting it is and how that looks, because I've heard you speak about it, but I haven't heard you necessarily elaborate on whose business is a good fit for that type of attention.

Yeah, fair point. So no, that's not something that I do on an ongoing basis with that regarding to the young man. I don't remember the specifics of that at this point in time, but it's not something that I'm currently involved with. We're coming up on the 10-year anniversary of Radical Personal Finance next month.

So it's been a there's a long pathway here. And I remember most everything from that journey and I'll share the lessons I've learned along the way. But that particular thing is not something that is current at this point in time. In terms of business consulting, the reason I don't talk about it much is simply that it's not something that I have much interest in.

Actually, that was a very poorly word. Let me rephrase. Trading time for money has never been my vision. Trading time for money and getting paid an hourly wage for money has never been my vision. From the time I was in my early 20s, I have always wanted leverage and I have always looked for leverage.

And when I had my first job out of college and people, long-time listeners, as you probably know, I had five things that I was looking for. One of the things that I said at that time and I have lived by for almost 20 years now is I want to be paid for results, not for time.

I don't like working for time. I don't like trading time for money. It's not scalable. I have a limited amount of time. It's not scalable. And it's just not a model that I want. If I were working and trading time for money as a central part of my business, then I would not do it.

I would go back and I would be a financial advisor and there I would have to be scaled because then I can bill fees based upon assets under management or based upon commission sales and I'm not trading time for money. I do not and I do not want to trade time for money, just as me personally.

And by the way, I recommend this to any other person. If you trade time for money, you are always limited on how much money you can make. If you take your time and you do things that are not directly constrained with time, then you have a much higher upside on your income.

And I have never felt that while I pursued my ideological windmills for a very long time in the beginning of the podcast, I don't think that I serve many people effectively by teaching you about wealth and then being poor. And so I've never wanted to do that. What I found though is that when I started the podcast, I had spent a lot of time working with real people.

And so I had a rich storehouse of stories, situations, experiences, etc. And I never did private consulting for the first years of the show because of that principle that I'm not going to trade time for money. But as I was some years away from that work, I started to feel like my skills were growing stale.

I was losing touch with real situations. I was losing touch with my audience because I used to have comments and whatnot, then I turned all the comments off. And so I just felt like I was too alone. And it's very easy to go into the ditch when you're sitting out by yourself thinking and you're not having real situations and real feedback.

And so when I started doing consulting, I found that it was a really good way of me having contact with people and genuinely helping and serving people, but doing it in a way that made sense for me. And so the rules that I set for myself is unlike if I were trying to build a financial advice business, I do not do follow-up and I don't do much preparation.

The only caveat about much is that I read everything. When people hire me, they can send me literature in advance and I will read their stuff. So I read their notes, etc. But I don't do follow-up. I do everything right there. And so I show up to a phone call, I listen, I speak, and we find ideas, I give people a list, and then we're done.

And that is really nice in my head because then I don't have this long string of to-do. Oh, I got to send you this or I got to follow you, etc. And so that's how I've always structured consulting and that has worked. And what I have gotten out of it is I have gotten the ability to speak and work with real people.

I've gotten to know who my audience is and I've developed from doing that consulting over the past years, I've developed a much clearer insight into how I can serve people. And so in some ways what I do is I take the lessons that I learn from my clients and the lessons that I share with them in private consulting, and then I take those ideas and I repackage them as courses.

Then I'm not trading time for money. And so it's kind of a good business model that my clients pay me for advice and I turn around and I take that advice and sell it to others at a cheaper rate, but yet I make a ton more money because I'm no longer limited to a one-on-one model.

So that's why I've never focused a lot on the consulting, and it's just kind of an occasional thing that I do. That's why I do it. But I do like to do it because it keeps me in touch with real people and I feel like that's really important because it would be too easy for me to develop inaccurate understandings of the world due to isolation.

Social isolation is not good for anyone. With regard to working with entrepreneurs, I don't advertise that much because it's not for the same reasons that I said, is that it's never been a central part of my business. But years ago I started working with some individuals and I was trying to figure out how do I make money on a podcast, and I decided to start coaching.

And so I took on a half dozen clients. And what happened is, and I started working with them regularly, at one point I organized a group coaching session, a couple of them, and I thought that would work. But basically what I quickly learned is that there was a clear distinction between employees and entrepreneurs.

And with employees I felt like, I don't know, five, ten sessions, there was nothing more to say. After five or ten comments or pieces of advice to an employee, you pretty well covered everything. And either that person has to go and do more, but you can't change anything on a week-by-week basis.

And so we would go through, and this distinction has always been difficult for me, between professional advice of being a financial planner and basically being a coach, a career coach, an income coach, where do I put on it? But what I found with employees, there wasn't a lot I could say after ten hours of working with people, et cetera.

And I don't like to lock people into contracts. I don't like contracts myself. I never do them, so I never liked it. But I found with entrepreneurs there was always something that could be done. And so years ago I basically disbanded the coaching model. I didn't talk about it.

But what I did is I kept some of my clients from those early days, and then when I have people that book me for a personal consulting call, if there's somebody that I really feel like I could serve, then I make them an offer on that call. And I just tell them, "Hey, I think I could help you.

Here's what I could do," and I go over the details with them in that context. And those people are always exclusively entrepreneurs because those are the people that I can work the most with over time, and I make them the offer on the spot. So that's why I don't advertise.

I don't talk about it. I feel like it's a win because by the time I make an offer to somebody of, "Hey, let's work together on a weekly basis," et cetera, then they already know how good I am. They already know what I have to say, what I don't have to say, and then I can position it clearly to them.

So that's the full back story of it. So I have a handful of clients that I work with over the years. I love it because the difference you can make is huge in the right circumstances. And so it feels really good, unlike when I used to question my fees as a financial advisor and say, "Am I really--I'm charging this guy 1.5%.

Am I really worth my money and whatnot?" Today, when I know the number I charge and when I can turn around and see, "Yeah, we made $250,000 more this year than last year, and I'm happy to take credit for some of that," then that feels really good, and it feels I enjoy that.

So that's the story. Wonderful. Thank you. My pleasure. So a couple of weeks ago, there was a gentleman that called up on a Q&A asking about how to go about intervening in a family member's finances, and you cautioned him against doing that because he hadn't been explicitly asked, and that can typically turn out poorly.

And then last week, you had a gal call up who was having a family feud over the same sort of thing. And my family experienced a handful of losses over the last handful of years of family members, and I'm really trying to impress upon the remaining elders of the families of both mine and my wife's to create death plans, essentially, like get your wills in order, get this in order, get that in order.

And I can't just go to them with my Social Security books and my fantastic wealth and knowledge and finances and just make them do what I think they should do. How do you go about encouraging this type of thing? Because, man, I really worry about one family member in particular where there's a lot of children involved.

And when something finally happens, I see nothing but messes. Yeah. It's a very hard question because it's an area where I see a real weakness in the marketplace, and there aren't a lot of people that are doing it effectively. So here's one of the great conundrums of the advice industry, and especially financial advice.

People that go looking for financial advice find it in abundance. There's everything, all the information is out there. All of the advice is out there. It's all out there. It's available. There's no hidden secrets. There's no unknown discussion. A few minutes with a web browser, a few minutes at your local library, and you can find everything that is there.

And so all of the information that is out there. But there's only a small subset of the population that ever actually engages in something proactive that's going to improve their life. People could go and take a class and improve their skills, and a tiny percentage of the population never does.

People could go and apply for another job that would make them more money or prepare for it and then apply for it. Very few people do. There's something in human nature where proactivity and go-getterness and all of that stuff is in very limited supply seemingly across a population. And so the information is all out there, but people don't seem to be that interested in going out and doing it.

So how would somebody like your family member actually take action? Well, usually in a perfect world they would hear a motivational speaker or they would come across a talk or listen to something and they would say, "You know what? I'm going to start being a go-getter. I'm going to get my life in order.

I'm going to set goals," which is why while so many people are dismissive of motivational speakers, I myself am not. I have been, but I try not to be. I try to discipline my mouth and not dismiss those people. Because while no one gets a 100% response rate, which is what people-- an evangelist out preaching the gospel on the street corner doesn't get a big response rate, but he changes the lives of those who do respond.

A motivational speaker out preaching his gospel to an audience of 1,000, 950 of them are probably going to go away and do nothing and say, "Oh, motivation doesn't work," but there's going to be someone in that crowd that's going to capture a glint and it's going to make a difference.

And so a motivational speaker who helps someone get on track, who helps somebody start being proactive about their life and organizing things and organizing their health and looking for information, that person is probably the best at lighting the spark. So either someone faces a crisis or someone lights a spark and they go after it.

And then when they go looking, the information is there. So then we have the second problem. How do you follow through and do it all? I know a lot of what I need to do. That doesn't mean I'm able to get it all done. I have undone things right now in my life just like we all do.

And so then you have to have the spark for someone to go out and look for information and then the sense of completion. They have to be the kind of person who's going to follow through and get it done. So this is why I myself always struggle with the role of a financial advisor because I know when I used to go and show up in people's lives, I was a catalyst for change.

Joe's friend would refer me to Joe. I'd show up at Joe's office and I would basically be a function of a professional, an unattached person, and a motivational speaker. And I changed people's lives because I got them to pay attention to their money. I asked them questions about their goals.

I understood about what they wanted to do, et cetera. But even in that structure, it was very hard to follow through on everything. And if there's not a financial motivation for somebody to do something, it's very hard to do it. So as a financial advisor, I was motivated to complete the sale of the insurance policy.

I'm motivated to get the signatures, get the check, and deliver the policy because I want my commission. I was motivated to get the account. But I was a whole lot more motivated to get the million-dollar account than the $10,000 account. $10,000 account, there's no point. I'm not doing this account.

It's too much paperwork for no money. And this is the problem that the financial industry faces, things like wills. The lawyer can be motivated to get the will done at a certain point in time. But all that matters is that the will for the check, for the motivation, is that the will gets signed -- or sorry, that the paperwork gets delivered.

Whether it all gets fully implemented or whether all the accounts get retitled, et cetera, the lawyer will give the checklist. But why is he going to go and spend hours following up, "Joe, listen, did you get -- did you retitle everything into the name of the trust so it often doesn't get done?" And so I don't know how to solve it because in a perfect world there would be this function.

I get so many calls from listeners who say, "I want to be a financial coach." Great. In a perfect world, somebody who wants to be a financial coach would go out and would find people and would be kind of that in-between. He may not be a lawyer charging $600 an hour.

He may not be a financial advisor charging a percent of management. He would be a consultant who could come along and say, "Let's actually get this stuff done." But is the guy -- is your family member going to pay for that? Is your family member going to go and pay $500 to somebody to make sure that his life gets squared away and gets buttoned up?

I don't see it happening. I've never seen it happen. It doesn't happen. So I don't know how to solve the issue, which is where as a family member I think you can express concern. You can try to share resources. You can share a self-help book, a NOLO book or other self-help materials.

But those of us who teach are constantly stymied by this problem. And it's simply that the problem is how do you get someone to implement? And from a motivational perspective, it's hard to figure out as well because you're teaching someone and you're saying, "I want you to implement this stuff, but am I going to spend my time following through and kind of beating you over the head to make sure you do it unless you're paying me?" And so you -- as a teacher, I feel like I abandon my principles sometimes, but I basically figure I'll do my best to teach them, but I can't make it follow through.

I don't know how to solve that problem. So it's a frustrating problem to me because I would like everyone's situations to be solved, but I don't know how to do it. So as a family member, hopefully you can navigate that thread, that needle of without prying and meddling, but encouraging, inspiring, connecting to people, your self-help information, et cetera.

But at the end of the day, people don't seem to change all that much. So I don't want to be cynical, but that seems to be life. It sure does. I didn't expect a silver bullet, but yeah, I hear what you're saying. It's difficult to thread the needle. I guess both on some level I know that's what needs to happen.

When you're given a place of authority, right, like that lady that called in last week, she's a daughter, she's got parents. So she can push. She can push appropriately. Because at the end of the day, and she's got good reason to push because it falls on her. This is my dad.

This is my mom. If this goes sideways, I'm the one who's got to do it, so I'm going to push a little bit. But you've still got to be wise in how you do that. But human nature is a mystery, and figuring out how to motivate people and to get people to follow through, all of that stuff, if we could all do that, we'd all be rich, we'd all be skinny, we'd all be sexy, everything would be solved.

But unfortunately, a lot of us are poor, a lot of us are fat, a lot of us are kind of ugly. So we haven't figured it out yet. Yeah, you ain't kidding. All right, well, yeah, I think that's good. It's good advice because, yeah, when it's your parent, you know, you can handhold them in some manner, and that can help motivate and get things done.

But, yeah, it takes a lot of massaging, that's for sure. Yeah, probably a good strategy, probably a good strategy, and we'll close out with this, is if you can bring along, if you can drop seeds in the way and you can bring along people along a pathway to introduce them to professionals in some way, that's probably a good scenario.

And so if I'm trying to influence somebody, even my wife, if I'm trying to influence her in some way, I'm usually pretty explicit about it, but I don't try to browbeat her into telling her, like, "These are all the things that we can do." The example I share publicly is when we were going to go RVing some years ago.

I've thought about RVing for years. She had RVs when she grew up, but she's not a wander around the world kind of person. She's a live in a house and be still kind of person. And so I had this idea, so I used outside influences. I started showing her RV channels and YouTube channels.

And she, over time, she's like, "Okay, I can see. It's not the weirdest thing in the world. I guess we could do that. Here's how we could solve it." And then in time with an external influence, then she came to the point of being willing to give it a shot and give it a try.

And so that's just a personal example, but I still do that, is that if I want to influence my children, I spend plenty of time speaking, but I just choose the resources that I expose them to so that it doesn't have to all come from me, and it doesn't have to all be my ideas.

So if you're trying to influence a friend or a family member, then I say you look for something and you try to bring someone along with you. So years ago, I went with a friend to a Dave Ramsey event in Tampa, and it was a great example of that, is that I don't think he still does those live events, but when he was doing his live events, he packed out the auditorium, and it was great because you pay $30 or whatever for a ticket, you bring people in, and he can--many people will go to it, but he can spend two hours talking about the Dave Ramsey plan, and he changed people's lives that day.

I'm sure many people came to that event, and they were motivated and encouraged to change, and he started them on the process. Handing someone a book, etc., can be helpful, but I think an event is probably the best solution. We've talked a decent amount about my business in today's show.

I want to do events. I really want to do events, and I have not figured out how to do them to commit to them, but I want to do events, and one of the reasons I want to do events in the coming years is to connect people because books are increasingly less effective.

People don't read. I haven't told this story in a long time, but I'll tell it. A few years ago--this was long before radical personal finance-- I used to give away Dave Ramsey's "My Total Money Makeover" books by the score. I would buy boxes of them from him for $10 at a time.

He would put them on sale, $10 each, etc., and I would carry a box of them in my trunk, and I would give them away to prospects in the financial business when they were in debt and things like that. I'd say, "Listen, I can't help you get out of debt.

I can't do it, but here's a book, and if you'll do this, you'll be able to get out of debt, and that's what you need right now," or, "It'll tell you how to make a budget," etc. But I would also give them away for presents, so things like wedding presents.

My standard wedding present at that time was I would give somebody a copy of "My Total Money Makeover," and I would tuck cash into the book. So I'd give them cash in "My Total Money Makeover." But one of the experiences that I had was there was a friend of mine that I knew locally, and this was somebody who I knew was probably not very good with money.

So in this case, what I did was I took the book, I gave him the book, "My Total Money Makeover," wrapped it up, and I put three $100 bills into the book. I didn't hide them, but I put them in between the pages. So if somebody opened the book and read it, then all the money would fall out.

I put a nice card, etc. I didn't put the money in the card. I put the money in the book. So I never expected this to happen, and it didn't happen with the other ones that I did this. But this one person, a few years later, this person came to me and said, "Hey, Joshua, I was just cleaning out my stuff, getting rid of stuff, and I found this book that you had lent to me, and I wanted to give it back to you." So I took the book, and remembering, because the person I think had said thank you, but there was never a $300 thank you.

There was like, "Oh, you gave me a book. Thank you." And it's like, "I bet they never found it." Usually when people find it, they'd say something to you. So I sat there in front of him. I took the book, and I said, or I asked him, I think, I said, "We're going 10 years ago, so I can't do the play-by-play exactly without taking liberties." But basically I said, "Did you read it?" He's like, "Oh, yeah, yeah." So I flipped the book open, and I pulled out one $100 bill.

I pulled out another $100 bill. I pulled out a third $100 bill. And I said to him, I said, "Listen, all of the answers," because he was in financial trouble, I said, "All of the answers were sitting here for you the whole time." I said, "I didn't just give you a book, but you have to actually take the first step and open the book.

You have to actually do it." And he had a pretty sober look on his face, because that $300 would have been a big, a big, he needed it. He was broke. And I took the $300, and I put it in my pocket, and I took the book. And I hope that the lesson stuck, but unfortunately I know that it didn't.

Because I know, because he's wandered and wandered for years, marriage is almost in divorce court, everything is a nightmare. And it's because he never opened the book. And by the way, now that I remember, I haven't told the story in years, but the book, I would always look at the book on his bookshelf, because I would be in his house, book was always there on the bookshelf.

And I always wondered, did he open it? I never, I disciplined myself to never touch it until he handed it back to me, and I took the money out. But I kind of feel like life is like that, that if you just open the book, just try, right? Reach out to the bookshelf and take the book and look for a solution to your problem.

Then all of a sudden, there's plenty there. You open the book and there's $300, that's a good start. But you don't open the book because you're busy with other things. You don't bother to try. You don't even take the first step. And while all of the answers are out there for you, it's not there for you.

And life is like that for people who decide, I'm going to try. They turn around and the solutions and the answers are everywhere. But most people, I don't know how to get them to try. They just go in circles for decades and then they die. So, who knows? - That's fantastic.

I haven't heard you tell that before. Thank you. - Yeah. I think I told it years ago. It's been so many years I've kind of forgotten about it. But that used to be my… - You might have. You forgot about the donkey kid too. So, you never know. - I better make sure I'm doing my anti-dementia protocol hardcore.

I'm working on it. But I better be careful. All right. Good stuff. Thank you for the great questions. I appreciate it. Anything else that we can go? - That'll do it. I appreciate your time. - My pleasure. All right. With that, we wrap up today's show. It was a good lesson there at the end.

I had some softballs teed up to me today on a silver platter from callers. A good lesson there at the end. My friend, if we, you and I, are the ones who go looking for the answer, they're out there. We just got to take the first action and go looking for it.

If you'd like to join me on next week's show, patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance. I'm humbled and blessed by all of the Joshua promotion from my callers. Thank you to each one of you. As far as my courses that are available, you can find the link at radicalpersonalfinance.com/store. But in hindsight, the four that are on the market right now is internationalescapeplan.com.

In that course, I will teach you step by step how to set up a plan B. That plan B can become a plan A. What I mean is a backup plan. So if you ever need to leave your country, you have a plan for that. And then if you want to just emigrate and move abroad, as I have done, then everything that you do is in that direction as well.

But in years of studying economic crises like Venezuela, a listener today mentioned Argentina, I just came to the conclusion that the best way to survive and thrive during a crisis is by not being there. And there is a whole element of physical preparedness that really makes sense. You don't run away from your country because a tornado comes through town.

You have a tornado shelter and insurance. But in many, in certain scenarios, leaving your country is one of the best solutions that's out there. So you can find that course at internationalescapeplan.com. My newest course, which is not currently for sale, is How to Retire Successfully. That will be back, but a listener I was talking with, that will be back in, again, I would estimate one to two months.

So howtoretiresuccessfully.com. And so you can check that out when it's available. And then the third course is How to Buy Bitcoin Privately, bitcoinprivacycourse.com. That's a course that I did with my friend Gabriel Custodiate. Great course where we teach you how to buy and own and use cryptocurrency, specifically Bitcoin, but we've talked about a couple other currencies in that course completely anonymously.

No KYC requirements, no ID, anything. Bitcoinprivacycourse.com. And the final course that's currently on the market is called Hackproof, hackproofcourse.com. We teach you how to beat fraudsters, prevent identity theft, and say goodbye to cybercrime. And so you can check that out at hackproofcourse.com. If you're interested, by the way, I try to create courses for problems that I see under-discussed in the marketplace.

And so there are many wonderful other teachers out there with great stuff, and I encourage you to use those for those issues. But if you're curious, I myself try to look and say, "Where is there something that's not well taught in the marketplace?" And that's what I create. So you can find the full listing.

Actually, I'll put them all in the show notes for today's show. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back with you very soon. The holidays start here at Ralph's with a variety of options to celebrate traditions old and new. You could do a classic herb roasted turkey or spice it up and make turkey tacos.

Serve up a go-to shrimp cocktail or use Simple Truth wild-caught shrimp for your first Cajun risotto. Make creamy mac and cheese or a spinach artichoke fondue from our selection of Murray's cheese. No matter how you shop, Ralph's has all the freshest ingredients to embrace all your holiday traditions. Ralph's, fresh for everyone.