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My name is Joshua Sheets. Today is Friday, July 7, 2023. And on today's show, we do live Q&A works just like call in talk radio. Call in, talk about anything you want. Ask any questions you want. Bring up any topic of conversation. You drive the show. If you'd like to join me for a Friday Q&A show, you can do that by becoming a patron of the show.

Patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance. That'll gain you access to these live call in shows so that you can participate. Ask your comments or ask your questions. Make your comments, etc. We begin with James in Colorado. James, welcome to the show. How can I serve you today? Hi, Joshua. Thank you for taking my call.

I have a wife and three young children. My wife and I have been talking a lot about just different options that we might want to do with regards to travel or short-term living in other locations. I just have a couple questions for you about that in terms of how it actually works in reality.

Okay. The first one is actually with regards to community and maybe specifically for your wife. I know that my wife has a lot of concerns about being able to develop community. If we were to travel around the world or to go live somewhere for a year or two, that sort of a thing.

I'm curious if you can speak about that because that's something that's very important for her. Yeah, it's hard to do. I think there are different people. First, I enjoy travel, but it's a personality thing. Some people enjoy it. Some people see value in it. It's not right for everyone.

There's a lot of work, a lot of money, a lot of work, and there are a lot of things about traveling that are not nearly as good as just simply picking a location and staying put. I think one of the big aspects is exactly this, is community. When you are traveling, unless there is an organizing principle to your travels that is putting you in contact with community, with some connection that you have through your work or something that you're doing, etc.

Traveling often doesn't create a lot of community, and it can be a very isolating experience. This can make the experience of travel for families very, very intense because now, instead of being able to be together with people who are like-minded, of everyone being in a familiar situation, you're constantly on your own.

You're constantly caring for your children, doing everything yourselves, and you don't have any kind of normal, familiar surroundings. I don't think, for example, that the long-term digital nomad lifestyle is a great fit for families. I don't think it's a great fit for the long-term. When you talk about travel, you have to visualize specific events or specific trips.

Let's go from, "We never travel at all. We never, ever go anywhere. We sit at home. We're always at home," to, "We never have a home. We're just bouncing around continually." Neither of those extremes are particularly attractive, I think, because if you never go anywhere, life becomes very monotonous and humdrum, etc.

So going somewhere is, I think, for most people, something that we desire, some change from time to time, an opportunity to see new things, experience new things. If this is part of your parenting, raising children and teaching them and showing them the world in some way, then you're going to need to go somewhere.

But you should be very cautious about the other extreme of just being on the road permanently, unless it's for a specific duration. I think people who really have thrived in that are those who've said, "We're going to take six months off. We're going to have a sabbatical. It's for a specific period of time, and we're going to travel to these six countries, one month in each country, or these ten countries, etc.

And here's why we're going to these places, etc." Six months to a year, as far as a sabbatical-type approach, I think can be really good because you know it's not forever. It's not a forever lifestyle, but it's long enough to really get the taste of a different type of lifestyle, and you can see whether you like it or whether you don't like it.

If you want to create community while you are traveling, you do need to be in a place for a longer period of time. And so, you know, being a few days here and a few days there, you spend all your time rushing around trying to make connections and train schedules and flight schedules, etc.

You don't get a chance to really be with people. But if you can schedule a few weeks to a few months in a place, then you can start to build friends and friendships. And if you can do that in a place where you have an in with a local community, I think that's a really good move.

What we do generally is we travel and we rely on the local Christian community as kind of an entree into meeting people. And so each Sunday, no matter where we are, we just look up a local church. We can possibly find anything, whether we speak the language or not.

Usually there's an English-speaking church or some kind of international church that can help if we don't speak the language. And we go and visit there, and we try to be friendly and connect with people and invite people for lunch, invite people for dinner, etc. And because we have children, it's usually fairly straightforward and simple that we get together and have a play date, etc.

Something like that. Or we have a dinner together. And families are often very kind to connect with us, host us, etc. And that's usually our connection into a local community. Sometimes you hit it off, sometimes you don't. But at least then you're interacting with people and you're getting to know people.

I think you can do this with other things. It's not quite as good as a church connection where you share kind of a strong perspective or worldview that distinguishes you. But I've had friends that have done this with CrossFit gyms or specific hobbies. You go to the local Brazilian jiu-jitsu gym or local boxing gym, things like that, where you have a connection with people and then meet people in some kind of local context to start to create some form of friendship.

But on the whole, it takes a lot of time to build friendships. And I think that this is one of the great marks in favor of a more stationary lifestyle is the fact that you have much more community. Those community ties and roots go much deeper. The relationships are more profound, more intimate.

And those things are very much worth having and maintaining. So if you have a strong community and you desire to travel, I would just do temporary travel that doesn't take you out of your community. It just takes you to another place. You spend some time there. You enjoy what's there.

Maybe you meet some people. Maybe you don't. Maybe you connect with people. Maybe you don't. But at least you still have your home community. One more caution. This can be easier. It can be easier to make relationships in some ways with children because children can naturally talk to people.

They can naturally be outgoing, etc. So there are ways that you can look at travel and you can say, "By traveling with children, we form relationships more." I just mentioned it's not uncommon. We meet another family. We have something in common. Our children can play together, etc. But the flip side of that is I find it much more difficult to build deeper relationships when traveling with children because of the logistics involved.

If you have three children, people are intimidated. You have a big family. You may be traveling in a place where they don't have children and you come in with three children. It fills up their house. Everything's a mess. Everything's loud. And people are super intimidated by your being there.

They don't reach out to you. They don't open up the doors to you because they don't know how to put five places at their dinner table. And then also it's hard to be as spontaneous, especially if you have young children. As a solo traveler, someone invites you to go to the next state over for a festival and you say, "Absolutely.

Let's go." And you can be very spontaneous. You can connect with people. You can spend long hours. But when you're traveling with young children, you have nap schedules. You have sleep schedules. You have times for them to decompress, etc. Logistics are a lot more challenging. So that's a fair, honest perspective that kind of presents both sides.

I would say the only way you know what you like is by testing it out and seeing what you enjoy, what you don't enjoy as a family. Yeah, no, I really appreciate that. The other kind of aspect of this that I'm wondering about is actually about your kids. So I know you've talked a lot about their ability to make friends in campsites and whatnot.

But what about just around their sports, you know, some sort of organized sports? Do you enroll them in things of that nature, whether it's dance classes or soccer or whatever? Team sports, we haven't done much of that. We're deficient in that. I have one child who is naturally athletic.

Others, my other children are more just mediocre, normal athleticism. And so I want to enhance athleticism, but it's not a huge priority. I think it's not my number one goal to be involved in team sports. I also have somewhat young children. And so the decisions that I have made are putting my children behind in terms of, for example, the American pathway of success for team sports.

My children are very poor at team sports. So if I wanted to create and cultivate baseball superstars or football superstars, I am harming their careers with regards to that expression. And if that's important to you, you need to not do that. You need to be in travel ball. You need to be in all the local young things, et cetera.

That's the American way of sports development. I myself am not attracted to really most of anything from that world. I appreciate a few elements of working together and teamwork and camaraderie, et cetera. But on the whole, I view the lifestyles of many of my U.S. American compatriots, and I'm just not interested.

It's not how I want to live. I don't want to do it. I don't see any benefit from that kind of obsessive team sport perspective. I think sports are damaging to most people who aren't playing. Obviously, the playing is good, but spectating, I don't spectate any sports like that.

So it's just not interesting to me as a father, and my children will undoubtedly be bitter at me someday for this aspect of it, but we all live as we can. What I do try to do is find opportunities, and so if that's a local gymnastics gym or a local jujitsu gym or something like that, I do look for opportunities for athletic endeavors.

And I have some of those things, but that's usually not something you do when traveling. That's something that you do when you're in a place for a longer period of time. And if that's of interest to you, then I think that that should be an organizing principle for your travel.

The world is a big place, and in order to travel effectively and successfully, it's good to have some kind of principle or organizing thing to organize your life around and your trip around. You can't go everywhere. You can't go and do everything. And so if you're going to go on a trip, let's just say you're going to do a three-week vacation trip across the United States.

We did this one time. We did a lighthouse trip, and we toured the southeastern United States, and we visited basically every lighthouse along the way. And that was just the simple organizing principle. We did other things, but we enjoyed the lighthouses because I had a child who was super into lighthouses, and it was a fun way to do it.

If you are into, you know, Mai Tai, kickboxing, well, then go and organize your time around that. Or if you're interested in sports, then maybe—and your children play basketball—maybe you join, you know, one of these traveling Christian mission organizations that uses sports and goes into community and does basketball clinics and things like that.

So I'm not super into sports. I don't see—other than personal athleticism, I don't see much value in sports, and I dismiss—I'm fairly dismissive of the value of team sports for personal athleticism. I think individualized pursuits that create athleticism that can endure for life are smarter. So I'd much rather my children play tennis versus American football.

American football doesn't enhance, like, overall athleticism, and it's something that's a very limited duration. So I'd rather my children be tennis players because that's a lifelong endeavor. I'd rather they be surfers than competitive swimmers because it gives many of the same benefits, but it's not such an all-encompassing, you know, endeavor.

But that's where I think you have to look at each individual child and make your assessments individually. Yeah. Can you maybe just—this will be my last question—can you provide maybe a little perspective of what other international parents, what their perspectives are on sports and just the different types of cultures that you've seen around the world?

What I've seen—if you're into sports and that's something that's important, then in some cases traveling again is going to enable that. So for example, playing soccer. The world plays soccer. Americans very much don't. And so your child, if you are into soccer and you're into a place where that's the culture, then you're going to have a leg up versus just being in your own local soccer league.

On the other hand, if you're playing American football, then the world doesn't play American football. And so that's an exclusively something you're going to do in the United States. Most of the people with whom I encounter internationally, team sports are simply not a big deal. It's not something that's important to them.

It's not something that they pursue, et cetera. I know a number of families that do individualized sports in the way that I've said. Now for a limited time at Delamo Motorsports. Get financing as low as 1.99% for 36 months on Select 2023 Can-Am Maverick X3. Considering the Mavericks taking home trophies everywhere from King of the Hammers to Uncle Ned's Backcountry Rally, you're not going to find a better deal on front row seats to a championship winner.

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And so their family's travels was largely based around going to worlds in Chile or Malaysia or wherever they happened to be. That was what they did was go to these international tournaments for their sport. And so I think that's a good organizing principle. But I don't have, if I say anything more, I'm just going to be repeating myself.

I see sports, there's no question that sports are a huge industry in the world and in the United States. If I look at it, I see some benefits of it. But it seems to me that a lot of the benefits of sport can be acquired in other ways and the parent should be thoughtful about those ways and make sure before just assuming that the norm is I need to be involved in team sports for 15 years.

The parent should be thoughtful about that and make an individualized decision. All right. Well, thank you, Joshua, for your time. I really appreciate it. My pleasure. Good questions. And in conclusion, I would say simply look for testing. Always test your ideas. If you think you want to go RV around the United States, we'll start with renting an RV for a couple of weeks and do that.

You think you want to go live around the world, take a month off and go and just go to one destination and be in one place and you'll make much more informed decisions. And you'll understand what you do like about it, what you don't like about it. And then it's not such a mystery.

Frank in Virginia, welcome to the show. I'm going to serve you today. Hi, Joshua. I just wanted to thank you and tell you how much your course on how to retire successfully is impacting me. Thank you. The first class on obviating retirement really struck me, especially thinking about pursuing a career I never want to retire from.

And I think the last time I called in, I told you that I 5x my income with a new job. And while the money is nice, I don't really enjoy my day to day work. And really, I think I have a passion for a different role. But if I switch to a different role, I take about like a 50% pay cut initially.

But then I think I could build my way back up to what I'm making now, I'm guessing over the course of like five years or so. And yeah, I think I want to wait to switch roles until I have like a solid savings of I'm thinking like around $100,000 in my bank account and then like pay off my car.

But I'm curious if you have any thoughts or suggestions on how to think about when the right time to switch might be. How old are you? 26. And are you married? Do you have any dependents? Not married, no dependents. Okay. I think first, in general, if I have to choose between a job that makes a lot of money, that I'm just going to do to make money and get out of as quickly as I can, versus a job that seems to be a really good fit for me, provides the long term lifestyle I'm hoping for, provides, you know, these kinds of soft points of enjoyment and just satisfaction.

And by the way, for the uninitiated, I don't look at it and say, I want to do a job that I'm passionate about. I think that's a false trail that we go down. Work is work. The primary focus of a job is to create income. That's what it's for.

That's the primary thing. And we try to make a job do everything for us, we often get into trouble. And so I'm not saying you should just do something you're passionate about. But there are jobs that are available to us that we can find that fit us. They appeal to us.

They provide for us a good fit between our personality and the way that we work. An engineer who has an engineer's mind, who enjoys solving problems, who's very detail oriented, finds a great deal of satisfaction in doing his engineering work with excellence. I would find myself very frustrated if I'm working in some kind of visual arts job, or my job is to create visual arts.

It's not my forte. It's not my--it doesn't connect with me the way that other things do. And so I'm not saying just do what you're passionate about. What I'm saying, choose a job that's an overall good fit for you and that has those elements of life that you want.

And what Frank is referencing is in my How to Retire Successfully course, the first class of it is a several hour class on how to render retirement unnecessary. It's called obviating retirement. And this I think is the first step. And this is nothing new. I've said this many times in public over the years, but I go through specific strategies for how to do that.

And the idea is find a strong connection between your job. Find a job that provides you with a lifestyle that is satisfying and appropriate for you. So if I had to choose between a job that made me a lot of money that I'm just going to get out of as quickly as I can versus a job that provides me with a long-term life fulfillment, I'm probably going to go in the direction of the long-term, you know, satisfaction, impact on the world, personal enjoyment, appreciation, et cetera, with a few caveats.

Caveat number one is what are my overall goals? So we were just talking about travel. Over the years, one of the most reliable and successful ways for people to go and travel, especially young people, is to take a hard job, a job that pays a lot of money because it's a lot of work, going and working on an oil platform or in a remote fishing camp or something like that where the conditions stink, you're away from everything, there's no fun, there's no nothing.

But you have a place to live and a job to do and just work, work, work, work, work. Work hard for six months, work hard for a year, spend nothing, and all of a sudden, magically, you come out the other side, you got $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 in your pocket, and you can go and fund your travels for 12, 24, 36 months, depending on what you're doing.

And so in that situation where someone says, "I really want to go and backpack the world," I'm not going to go and say, "Try to develop your dream career." It makes sense. Do the hard work and I've got a specific goal. Maybe you have a goal of getting out of debt and you've got a job that's paying you a lot of money but I'm going to pay off my car, I'm going to get $100,000 in the bank.

Well, I think it's smart. Just stick with it. And if you've got a relatively short time duration of, say, 12 months or 24 months or something like that, just do the hard job. Because even when you do work you don't love or that's not a good fit for you, if you're open-minded about it, you'll learn things.

There was a reason you picked this job, the reason you picked this industry, and you'll learn things about yourself, you'll develop skills, qualities, etc. that you will be able to use the rest of your life. And being financially stable is really valuable. Also, when you earn a lot of money, it changes who you are as a person.

Once you're the kind of guy who earns a high income, then you see yourself as the kind of guy who earns a high income. And you'll naturally always regress back to that or at least see yourself as capable of doing that. But you'll probably do it in a career that might be a better fit for you.

So I think working hard on a short-term basis is fine. Now the flip side is, if you do have clarity on a career choice that you think is a better fit for you in the long term, you want to get to that as early and as quickly as you can, especially if you are young and single, because you have a lot more flexibility to try it out.

And once you get there, it may offer you everything that you desire. On the other hand, it may not. And so you want to get to it as quickly as is reasonable so that you can try it out. And also so that you can establish yourself, start building up your credentials, building up your contacts, building up your skill base, etc, to really be successful in that.

And it's nice to do that when you don't have a lot of external pressure. So the reason I ask about, you know, are you married, do you have children, etc, is that when you have a lot more responsibility on your shoulders, then you have to be much more thoughtful about how you approach it.

And in your situation at 26, if you want to marry or if you want to have children, then you should be getting to it as quickly as is reasonable so that you're well-qualified, you're well-positioned, and you can make good progress up that career chain while you're also simultaneously building a family, things like that.

But on the whole, in general, unless I have a short—I'm going to work hard at the highest-paying job in order to achieve a short-term goal, but I'm going to sacrifice money for overall life fulfillment, believing that there's money in every industry. And so I may not today see how to make that money, but if I see a job that fits me, then in the fullness of time, I'll learn how to make that money.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. And one thing that I've been thinking about recently too that may help other people is kind of just this paradigm shift that I had a little bit of. Like the job that I have, part of the reason right now it's not super fulfilling to me is actually because I have a lot less responsibility than I used to.

So that means I have more time, more time to advance myself and get the different certifications and different things that could help me prepare for the next role. So I kind of see it as like, "Well, this company is paying me all this extra money and giving me all this extra time to actually just prepare myself for the next step." And that's part of how I keep myself sane a little bit during this.

But yeah, I have one other question if you have time. So another thing that really struck me with that class was like the three whys or the three questions like, "Who are you with?" and all that. And you talked about how like if you move away from home and like your parents are older, you only have like a set number of visits left with them, such as like annual holidays and that kind of thing.

And as an only child, that really made me think a lot about where I'm living and how I can see my parents more. The only thing is just like the job and the industry I want to pursue is really only in like the Virginia, D.C. area and the same opportunities are not at all available in the area where they live.

So are there any recommendations that come to mind or things I should think about or consider? Where do they live? Michigan. Are they, how long have they lived there? Their whole lives. Okay. And they're in their like 60s, they're retired. Right. So. It's not an easy thing to solve.

So this is a particularly interesting American kind of cultural phenomenon. What happens in the U.S. American culture is, generally speaking, our parents are very focused on pushing us into independence. The classic American trope of 18 years old, "All right, son, you're out of the house. Get out of here.

Don't want to see you again." This is a very unique cultural phenomenon on a global basis. Most families around the world from most other cultures are much more integrated throughout the generations. Much less pressure is placed on young people to be independent, to go out on your own, to move across the country, to go to college, et cetera.

And so there are good things about this. It creates strong independence. It creates, there's certain character qualities in young American men and women. But the downside is that those family relationships tend to be much less close, much less integrated. And the culture is much less supportive. So we tend to feel like we got to do it all ourselves.

It's a dog-eat-dog world. It's got to be, it's up to me, got to do it. And it also leads to just dissolving of close family ties. And so the situation that you're in is normal, where I'm in one place for work and my parents are in another place because that's where they're from.

So how do you solve it? Well, at the age of your parents, you don't yet currently have any strong responsibilities for care. And so that's a good thing. I would look at is, is there a way that I can choose a place to live that has a simple direct flight back and forth from Michigan to D.C.

or wherever it is that you're living, so that at least I can visit them regularly. And then I would look and say, can I have a place to live that makes it easy for them to come and see me? And so that's a good starting point. If you have a dedicated guest bedroom that they can stay in, and you can get them to come and spend a number of weeks with you regularly, et cetera, because they don't have time pressures for their job, that I think is a really great way of maintaining relationships.

And then in the fullness of time, if you want to be physically together with them and you're able to get a job that's from there or work from there, that's useful. But I think the most important thing is simply intentionality about it, intentionality about actually going and being there.

You can see your parents in a number of ways. It doesn't all have to be physically in person. You can call them regularly. You can be engaged with them. You can have your group text or group chat or whatever your family particularly uses and just share with each other what's going on.

And that can develop intimacy of relationship without your physically being there all the time. I mentioned traveling there frequently, just making it a standard part of your budget, that, hey, you know, every couple of months I'm just going to Friday afternoon, I'm going to be on the airplane, I'll be back Sunday evening, and I'm going to go and visit mom and dad.

That's going to be just a part of my lifestyle so that I'm with them regularly. And then going back for events, you know, weddings or graduations, whatever it is in your broader family. Also you will need to talk to mom and dad about what happens in their advanced years, and you'll need to make preparations for that.

As an only child, you have the responsibility to care for your parents as they age. And so you'll want to make sure that you're proactive about that, talking to them about that, and that thinking about how you're going to see to their well-being as they get older and what the best way to do that is.

If they're from Michigan and that's where their community is, I don't think that you want to move them away if it can at all possibly be avoided. You want them to have a rich and fulfilling social life. That's super, super important for them. And so plucking them up and moving them to northern Virginia when they don't have their friends, et cetera, that's not a recipe for success.

So more likely it's going to be a matter of you're going back and forth and/or you're having plans to go and be with them if they need care and really being intentional about it. But you need to be opening up the conversation with them and talking about it with them.

My father, when his parents started to get older, he moved them across the country from Colorado to Florida so that they would be there and to care for them. And so as a child, that's your responsibility. If you believe that it's best for mom and dad to be with you, then you need to move them to be where you are.

But if you believe that they're best where they are, then you're going to have to go there. And life is not perfect. We don't all live in the same hometown we're from. But by being aware of it, you can be more intentional about those moments, be more intentional about what you do with them in terms of facilitating intimate relationships outside of visits.

You can be more intentional about visiting them regularly. You can be more intentional about engaging them in great experiences. If your dad's a hiker and he's in good health, then go to Ireland and walk across Ireland with him or whatever it is that the kinds of things that you guys would be into together.

By being aware of the shortness of life, you can focus on doing those things that are appropriate within your family culture. And that's the best I think we can hope to achieve. Great. Thank you. I appreciate your insight as always. My pleasure. Great stuff. We move on to Kyle in Washington.

Kyle, welcome to the show. How can I serve you today? Hi, Joshua. I'm at a new hands-free set. Is my audio quality okay? Perfectly acceptable. Go ahead. Wonderful. I'm curious about... So I currently am trying to design a new career path for myself and my family. And we talk a lot about spousal support in the way of life insurance and things like that.

And maybe I've just ignored what you've said in the past because it didn't apply at the time. But I don't know that I've heard you speak terribly often about what a business design would look like if it would be something that your spouse could take over in the event of your passing or that would be, you know, like, for example, making sure that you're not doing a physical labor job, doing something like that has a book of business you can pass on like realty or insurance or something in that regard.

I feel like that is equally, if not more important than a life insurance policy. You know, if it's not adequately funded, it could run out before end of life comes for your partner. I just wanted to hear some thoughts and suggestions as I design this, you know, call in next week with a more well-designed question.

I have spoken about this topic, but really I only speak about it in the context of those who are uninsurable for whatever reason. Usually due to health conditions or due to avocations, you know, dangerous hobbies or things that they're involved in and can't get life insurance or can't get disability income insurance.

Then that's where this play comes into play. And so I don't consider this to be nearly as important as proper insurance. Insurance is a miracle. It's an absolute miracle. And if somebody is in good health and is insurable under normal or under reasonable rates, the ability to go out and get millions of dollars of life insurance for pennies, for a few, you know, dozens of dollars a month is incredible.

And so that should be the primary solution for most people. And because the cost versus the payoff is massive. So having millions and millions of dollars of life insurance is the simplest, most obvious way to protect your spouse if you die and having good disability income insurance is the simplest, most obvious way to protect your spouse if you are disabled.

So with regard to business design, if somebody can't get life insurance or can't get disability income insurance, do they need to think about that? Yes, they absolutely do. And the problem with opining on this extensively is that it's very personalized. And I have known people who had this as an ambition.

But, you know, my wife is different from your wife and each woman is going to do things differently. First, I think that we can point to a lot of situations in which, you know, a husband didn't make a big elaborate plan. And when push comes to shove and his wife has to step up, she does it.

Women are incredibly capable. They may not want to be queen of the business world, but they certainly are capable of coming in and doing it. I had a client some time back who was a perfect example. I spoke with a lady and with her son. Her son was the one who hired me.

And basically his father had died, I think about 12 years ago. His father had directed that when he died, he had some form of machine shop, some kind of engineering and machining work, that his wife was supposed to sell the business and that was where her money was going to come from.

Well, she decided she didn't want to sell the business. She wanted to run the business and she'd been running it for 12 years. She had no experience prior to it and she was making a very healthy seven-figure, multi-seven-figure income for years since it, having the time of her life, just totally enjoying it.

And her husband couldn't have guessed that this would be, I don't think he would have guessed, that she would be this lady who is running this fabulous business, but that was the path that she took and she was very happy in it. And she was thinking about selling the business when she came to me.

Turned around, I said, "Don't sell the business. Why would you sell the business? It's a great business and you love it. Keep going." And et cetera. And so that can happen. Also, if husbands and wives are actively working together, then that's fairly obvious. I've worked with many people who have a wonderful family business.

They work together. They're very involved in those situations. If one of them dies, the other is obviously going to continue forward. If I look at my own situation, my wife is not particularly, she's very capable, but she's not particularly interested in business. And it doesn't make any sense to me why I would go and build a business that I don't necessarily want to have just because she would be able to do it or be interested in doing it when I can buy insurance that very healthily protects us.

And so maybe things will be different down the road when our children are grown. She may be more involved in a family business. We'll change businesses. But it seems like a very secondary issue to me to focus on if somebody is able to get insurance. Now, if somebody is not able to get insurance, then I think we need to bring it much more to the forefront.

And the first point should be engaging in much more conservative financial planning so that if you die, your wife is not left bereft of opportunity and support. And so first, we're going to be much more conservative. We're not going to have any borrowed money. We're going to have everything paid down.

If we are going to have access to borrowed money, it's all going to be in the name of the person who's not able to get insurance coverage, etc. Our finances are going to be very carefully divided so that she's not left with any debt so the debts die with the guy who's likely to die early.

And then I think then you look at your wife and you say, "Where are her skills or her abilities?" And so making sure that she's current on certifications, making sure that she has a career path where she can easily be employed, that's going to be, I think, a simpler step versus a business that is appropriate.

And then if there is a business that's appropriate, encouraging her to be involved with it or starting it and supporting it, then that becomes definitely a high priority. I just don't know how to--because of the obviousness of the life insurance solution, I don't know that we should make that a primary factor unless somebody is uninsurable.

So that's why I probably don't talk about it as much as you might like. Okay. Gotcha. Just buy more insurance. If I'm worried about her making it to 110 and me making it to 70, cover it with insurance. Buy more insurance and save more money. And so that was the flip side is what about old age?

Well, I do always talk about this in old age and retirement planning. Virtually every person--so especially if you are the one generating income, you need to pay attention very, very carefully to making sure that your wife is going to have lots of money and be provided for. But for most people, that comes down to--if somebody has a lot of money saved and invested, et cetera, then it's fairly straightforward and obvious.

If somebody doesn't have a lot of money, the best way to protect your spouse is to delay your retirement for Social Security until at least age 70 because the spousal benefit is calculated based upon the primary insurance amount for the primary breadwinner. And if you die--so if you wait until 70, that makes a big difference in terms of her financial security.

And then doing the same thing with pensions and pension calculations. And so you definitely need to make sure. And statistically speaking, most men are older than their wives. Most men die before most women do. And so most women have a significant period of widowhood, and that's important to plan for financially.

Hopefully you have enough assets that you're covered. And I still wouldn't go to business as a primary solution because is your 85-year-old wife really going to be that active in business? That comes down to a specific accumulation goal where you need to make sure that you have her income squared away with for the rest of her life.

Gotcha. Yeah, I like that answer. It makes moving forward a little bit more clear. It helps. It is really important because when my wife married me and when she became my wife and the mother of our children, that was a very big cost to her in terms of what she could earn if she was an independent woman, et cetera.

Now, I think she got a pretty good deal. I retired my wife when she was 20-whatever. And as far as I'm concerned, she never needs to produce a dollar of income again. That was the deal. But on the flip side, I have to make sure that I do my job to provide for her and protect her.

And so if that means I need to work extra more years so that she is well-provided for in retirement, that's the deal. That's what we signed up for. And so it's my job to make sure that her life is taken care of forever. And so it is a very high priority for me, and it's definitely something that needs to be carefully planned around.

Yeah, that's what I'm having thoughts around right now is that very thing. Yeah, the all-encompassing insurance package that is ensuring that your unemployed wife-- because my wife and I made the same decision. If the kid's here, you're unemployed, I'm the guy that does the work, period. So the good news is in a normal situation, for a family who's made those decisions, your income is undoubtedly significantly above average.

Your financial position is undoubtedly significantly better than average. I have no question about that. You would never be on this phone call if that weren't your situation. So what you do is just imagine, look at your life, and say, "Okay, I die today. What do we have?" Well, we have insurance, or we don't have insurance.

By the way, for older people, buying 10-year term policies and whatnot is still very, very reasonable. You can get really reasonable term life insurance policies really through your 70s on 10-year term life policies. And those are very, very useful to give you another 10 years of coverage. I have worked with couples who were just woefully behind-- note the air quotes--behind in terms of where they hoped to be financially.

And so step one, you're working. You've got kids gone by that phase of life. You've got kids gone, your big external obligations. The only thing you need to focus on is you right now. So let's do 10 years. You're 60 years old, or you're 64 years old, and you're behind.

Let's make a plan from 65 to 75. Again, in many cases, you can pick up a term life insurance policy. You can often have life insurance as part of your group benefits at work, even when you're older and past kind of the normal age at which life insurance is cheap.

So get a good life insurance policy. Next, change your lifestyle and make sure that you have a lifestyle that is going to be fine even if you're dead and gone. So if you have a paid-off house, great idea. A lot of times moving to a simpler accommodation, moving to a small apartment proactively before you have to, selling the big house, turning that into a rental or buying a couple of rental houses and living in a modest house so that her expenses are covered, and then making sure that you have a lifestyle that's modest as compared to your overall means.

It doesn't cost that much money to live, especially not in the United States of America for a single woman, a widow. You can live perfectly adequately on a couple thousand dollars per month. So as long as you have that baseline coverage, she has a place to stay, and she has income that's guaranteed that's going to provide for her, then I would look at the other things, the lifestyle decisions, and just say, "How can we enjoy our lifestyle decisions without signing us up for something that's going to put you in the poor house?" So always being conscious of, "If I die, is my wife taken care of?" And beyond that, it's just a matter of individual numbers and the amount of assets that you have, etc.

But you may work an extra five years, or she may--usually you may work an extra five years so that you have that much of an extra margin in your finances so that she has comfort and not scarcity. Sure. Okay. I think you should also consider, when you reach that stage of life, is also why you should consider annuities as part of your retirement income strategy.

So if you reach a point in time and you're not going to work, and you're not going to generate income, then you should make sure that your money is-- some of your money is in the form of an annuity stream. If you have Social Security, that's ample, that may be enough.

If you have another defined benefit pension from a government or an employer, etc., that may be enough. If you don't have that, make sure that you put some of your money into an annuity income stream with a dual-life payout so that she's got income for the rest of her life.

And it'll give her much more security versus sitting down and looking at giant fluctuations in a mutual fund portfolio. Make sure that there's an income stream that is there for your life and for her life. Okay. Yeah, that helps with the business design thing. It was giving me some heartburn just because it's hard to align two people's specific interests.

You know, your example, your wife is-- she's a business-minded gal but not interested in business. And how do you-- like, if I'm going to pick the perfect thing for me, it's not the perfect thing for her, and so it's very difficult to design that type of thing. Not that there can't be, like, a solid husband and wife team in any number of industries.

And one more comment on that. I think that what you could consider is, does she have something that's her own thing that she's into? Because a lot of women, I think, especially as children grow, they're out of the house, et cetera, it's nice not to have to do anything to generate income, but where is her contribution to society going to come from?

Where is going to be her--what's her work? What's she doing? God forbid she just sits around and, you know, lazily watches TV all day. Not a satisfying life. And so what you may find is some way to encourage her, and she may have her own business that she's interested in, there may be a charitable endeavor, there may be a community organization, whatever it is, but you want to make sure that it's not only a financial consideration.

If you imagine you're dead this year and your wife is X number of years old, what's she going to do with her life for the next couple of decades? And I think that you have a responsibility to help and to facilitate and to work with her and support her and make sure that she has something that's going to be engaged, because her social needs and her contribution needs are massively important.

And so maybe there is a sense in which her having--investing into her business that she's really interested in, that does something in the world that she's super into, will pay off in much more than just financial terms. Okay. I appreciate it. Thanks very much for doing these Q&As and letting people kick stuff like this around with you.

My pleasure. I enjoy it. I know it's not always terribly helpful for everybody, but, you know, there's always, I'm sure, a nugget or two that pop into people's heads, even if they're not in the same stage as, you know, one caller or another. Am I the last guy? Can I do two?

We've got two more callers behind you, but go ahead. I'll give you a second one. Go ahead. All right. All right. How are you handling screen time and introductions to video media and stuff like that in regards to your children with their peer group, you know, going over and staying at friends' houses and stuff like that?

I'm sure they're getting to the age where it's difficult to wrangle that type of thing out of, you know, entirely away from them. I'm sure that it's introduced from time to time. And, you know, we're really pushing hard on keeping that kind of nonsense away as best we can.

But at some point, I'm going to lose my overreach. I'm wondering how you're handling it. Right. Well, the first thing is, my own social network is pretty carefully curated. And so in terms of my children's friend groups, peer groups, et cetera, none of it is accidental. And what I find is that a lot of these things, especially things like screens and how digital devices and screens and whatnot are going to be used, this is very much a class thing.

And I'm not a low-class guy. And so I don't really hang out with low-class people. And so within my social class, it is normal to have minimal screen engagement, minimal just nonsense stuff. It's normal. That's not to say we all have the same rules. You know, I don't think any of us are zero-screen people.

But we're not, you know, sometimes I'll go out to a restaurant and I see low-class people and they've got a baby. The other day I literally saw a baby stroller with about a six-month-old and she had her iPad and just her nose stuck in an iPad. I don't, like, I'm not sitting here judging her, but that's really bad behavior.

That's really, I guess the thing I could support is, we don't know how destructive that may turn out to be. This is very new and very, very untested. Now for a limited time at Del Amo Motorsports. Get financing as low as 1.99% for 36 months on Select 2023 Can-Am Maverick X3.

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Offer in soon. See dealer for details. And so within my social-- It's that opportunity cost that you've cited. I'm sorry for cutting you off. Go ahead. Go ahead. It's that opportunity cost that you've cited in the past. Like, yeah, today it's easy. What will that breed tomorrow? Right. Right.

Exactly. Just don't-- Exactly. So amongst intelligent, educated people, kind of my middle-class standing where maybe we're not all the wealthiest people in the world, but we're all educated, thoughtful people with clear convictions on life, et cetera. That's who I hang out with. None of us are mindless about it.

We're all paying attention to it. In addition, I think that within my generation of parents, meaning mid-30s, 30s-ish people, late 30s, early 40s people, we were along-- I'm a very leading millennial. I remember the world before constant computers and digital technology, but I'm also a digital native. I'm at the front end of the millennial space.

And so I don't know a single one of my friends whose life didn't get turned upside down and wrecked by things like Internet pornography. Our parents meant well, but they were clueless. All of us were at the leading edges of gaming, and we watched that. We were the halo generation through high school and college.

And so we've experienced that, and so we also know the good and the bad from it, and we want to protect it. So my point is that when you hang out with people who are of your social class and of your convictions, then it's less of an issue. And so I don't worry too much about it.

Now, if my children were in a government school where there's all classes mixed together, and I can't control the environment, I don't know whether these are high-quality parents, low-quality parents, then it would be a very different scenario. But I have chosen to manipulate our social environment, and so this is not a particularly difficult issue.

That said, I have a personal policy to say that I don't think children should be excessively sheltered. I believe that it's important to shelter from genuinely harmful things, and especially at an early age. So none of us-- one event, one really bad event without specifying, can destroy a person's life just in an instant.

So something that has really bad outcomes, I will absolutely make certain-- that's my job-- I will absolutely make certain that children are protected and are safe from those kinds of things. But in terms of seeing things that are different than what they do, or going and playing video games that we don't play at home, et cetera, I think that excessive sheltering, excessive rules-based stuff doesn't turn out-- doesn't seem to turn out really great.

And I'm particularly sensitive to this from coming from the conservative Christian cultural milieu. I think any of us who have lived in that world, we've watched hyper-extreme conservative people who try to protect their children from everything, and they do it with a strong fist of authority. And then in the fullness of time, lo and behold, children gain independence.

And in many cases, they're so bitter at their parents' hyper-protectiveness that they just go the other way, and they just-- they discard everything that their parents believed in, and they just wholeheartedly embrace everything that's the opposite. And so, again, it comes back to perspective. Where are we actually protecting from?

One of the things that I think my own parents did really well with all their children was they were, I think, certainly somewhat sheltered. I mean, we had a lot of standards about what our house did, what was in our house, and things like that. But they weren't hyper-protective, or we were never allowed to go to somebody's house and do this or the other thing.

And what they did was they maintained a relationship and talked with us through those things. And so, to me, this is what I want to do. I want to make certain that my kids aren't at some slumber party and unsupervised, and their stupid peers are showing them hardcore pornography or something like that.

That's totally destructive. And so I can manipulate that in terms of environment. But if they go to someone's house and they're playing a game that we may not have because we don't do a lot of video games, then I encourage them to do it. Go and enjoy that, and then talk about it.

Because I want my children--I want to use-- I look at it like a Pareto principle, that if 80% of our time and 80% of our focus is productive, quality, wholesome stuff, then we're going to be very well off in the long run. But on the flip side, the exposure of the 20% of time is important to have exposure, because they're going to face all the same challenges that I face.

I have to manipulate my own environment, my own digital environment. What's on my phone, what's not on my phone? What websites I go to, what websites I don't go to, because I have to protect against my own weaknesses. It's so much easier to go on YouTube and veg out for an hour and a half than for me to go and do something that's productive and feed my brain with something that's positive.

And so I need them to fail and to have experiences so that they can learn and explain. And so, like with video games, there's nothing particularly wrong with video games. The biggest cost of video games is what's the opportunity cost. And so I teach my children that. And so, "Dad, why don't we do this?" "We don't do this because of the opportunity cost, and I want you to have these benefits.

I think this is healthier. I'd rather you be playing outside in the sunshine. I'd rather you be reading a book. I'd rather you be playing a board game, doing something that's facilitating. But I also want you to not be incompetent socially. So if you're going to go and this is the thing," a lot of young people bond over a video game.

We're not anti-video game people. I'm just very mindful of the opportunity cost. And then I think that as the age goes up, then that becomes more and more important to give children room to try different things, to experience different things, because they have to learn how to handle it themselves and make their own decisions once they're out of the house.

Is that enough? - Yes. Gives me something to ask next week. Thank you very much. Welcome back from vacation. - My pleasure. - Glad to be back. We move on now to Corey in Maryland. Corey, welcome to the show. How can I serve you today? - Hey, Joshua. Thank you so much for having me.

And thank you for your time. Can you hear me okay? - Sounds great. - Okay, excellent. So I have a quick question about budgeting. So for some basic context about me, I'm recently married. And although my wife and I have only been married for six months, we've lived and worked together really well over many years.

- Great. - As a couple. And we combined finances a little bit before marriage, which is kind of not, I guess, the usual thing people recommend. But part of that is we set up direct deposit into the same accounts, established that financial transparency. And then we also started using a budgeting app called YNAB.

I'm sure many of your listeners have heard of it. But basically we've done that for one year. And now we have a lot of data. And we're interested to know what your thoughts are about how to review maybe one year's worth of budgeting data and have a productive, positive budgeting meeting for the next year.

- Good. When do you and your wife, if I ask her, what are Corey's goals? Does she know what your goals are for the next three to five years? And do you know what hers are? And do you know what your family goals are over the next, say, three to five years?

- That's a great question. I think that probably she would say that my goals are to basically continue just getting more close to both of our families, spending more time with our families. That's something that I value a lot. And I actually really enjoy spending time with her family.

But her goals are more specific because she's in a PhD program. She's almost done. She's got maybe another year, year and a half. So her goals are probably to close that out and I'm supposed to support her in that. - Mm-hmm. Okay. - But that's kind of where we're at right now.

- The reason I say that is it's wonderful that you have this year's worth of data. That's great. So now as you asked, what do you do with it? Well, you look at it. But what lens do you use to look at it with? Is the goal to have your budget, your expenses as low as you absolutely can?

I don't think that's particularly a good goal. Why should we go through life trying not to spend money? But on the other hand, is your goal to have your expenses as high as they possibly can be, that you spent all your money? Well, I think that's probably not a great goal either.

And so you have to have some lens by which you analyze your budget data. And that lens, as far as I'm concerned, should be your goals. What are your goals? Because the only way that you can tell whether you are on the right track or on the wrong track is by comparing what you're doing to where you want to go.

So this is kind of a silly example. But actually, let me articulate it this way. If I tell you that I'm eating a 10,000 calorie a day diet and I currently weigh 415 pounds, then do you think, am I doing the right thing or am I doing the wrong thing?

What do you think? Yeah, that's a great point. I'm certainly not heading in the right direction. But what if I tell you that my name is Brian Shaw and I am a five-time world's strongest man and I'm preparing for my world's strongest man competition right now? Or what if I tell you that I'm a world-class sumo wrestler and I'm in the prime of my career in the Japanese sport of sumo wrestling?

Now it changes things, right? Yeah, that makes sense. You're going back to the fundamentals of why are we doing this at all. On the other hand, if you come into my living room and I'm just a fat slob sitting in my recliner watching TV all day stuffing my face, then now your initial reaction was exactly right.

Agreed? That's right, yeah. So this is just kind of a silly example but hopefully a memorable one that you can't tell, I can't look, you can't today send me your budget data and I make any kind of judgment on that budget data until or unless you can articulate what your goals are and where you're trying to go.

Because Brian Shaw is probably about 400 pounds or at least somewhere in that range and eats 8,000 calories a day or 10,000 calories a day and he's in his athletic prime for his sport. But that's very different than where he'll be 10 years from now. I bet you 10 years from now he'll be leaned out consistently, very, very different because even if you're a strong man or even if you're a sumo wrestler, you can't carry that weight around that much mass and weight around and expect to have a long life expectancy.

So a sumo wrestler will come into the sport, will get very, very large but that's necessary for the sport and then many times even a world-class sumo wrestler will come out the other side and will get back to being completely lean because you can't have that mass and weight and be healthy for the long term.

It's too hard on your body. So going back to your finances, if I come to your budget data and I look at your budget data and let's assume that you're not saving any money. I'm just making it up. You're not saving any money. But we look down at your budget data and we see that your wife's PhD tuition bills are being paid and everything's on track, etc.

and you are developing your career, she's developing her career and you have a plan where a few years from now your income's going to be going up significantly and that's when you're going to start saving money. Then I look at it and say, "Well, that's a reasonable plan. I'm not too worried about it.

I'd like to have a little wiggle room in it, maybe save a little bit of money, but it's a reasonable plan." On the other hand, if you tell me that your goal is to retire early in seven years so that you can buy a sailboat and sail around the world, then I'm going to look at your budget and I want to see you with a 60% or an 80% savings ratio and we're going to use that goal to judge your expenses.

Similarly, if you... I'm not going to give example after example. So that's the point that you can't look at your budget data and analyze it until or unless you have some sense of a goal that by what measure, by what standard, by what metric are we going to look at this data and decide whether we're on the right track or on the wrong track.

Now, while you're doing that, you can project. So let's say you look at your budget data and say, "If I keep doing what I'm doing today, where am I likely to be in 10 years? If I'm saving 20% of my income, then how much money am I going to have?

Does that feel good? Is that right or is that not right? And then if I keep doing what I'm doing in budget categories, am I on track?" And years ago, I'd come in to you... I'll see if I can find it here in a moment and give you the exact episode number, but I did a show on budgeting and how to analyze a budget.

And the point that I made in that show, the most important point, is that not all budget categories are the same. Some budget categories... I'm talking about expenses. Some categories of expenses, we want to see going down because these are categories that are not important to us. And if we can see these things going down, then excellent.

We don't need to spend more money on them. Some categories are things that we want to see going up. And so you might want to see your giving money go up, right? How great that we can give more money. You might want to see your saving money go up.

You might want to see your lifestyle expenditure money go up. It's fun to fly on fancy airplane seats instead of boring seats. It's fun to stay in nice places, nice hotels, instead of budget hostels. And so you might want to see those things increase. Education, you want to see that go up sometimes.

And then some you just want to maintain and make sure they're not getting out of whack. So in general, look at your budget and say, "If we keep doing what we're doing for the next year, are we happy with the results?" And then think about where you want to be overall in three to five years, and then ask ourselves, "Is our budget getting us in that direction?" Okay, I really appreciate your perspective and wisdom on that.

And thank you for your time. I've listened to you probably coming up on 10 years now, so it's my first time, I guess, calling into your Friday Q&A sessions. I just really appreciate all the wisdom and experience you've shared with me over the years. I'm glad you're here. Next week is the exact 10-year calendar anniversary of the very first episode of Radical Personal Finance.

So thank you for being here for that journey. Yes, sir, and I'll also plug your courses too. I highly recommend them. Thank you. They're great. Thank you. I appreciate that. All right, we go on to Beth. Beth, welcome to the show. How can I serve you today? Hey, Joshua.

Can you hear me okay? Sounds great. I'm curious what you would recommend for thinking about long-term care insurance. So, like, my husband and I are late 20s, early 30s, and, you know, we're kind of watching, like, grandparents and parents starting to deal with, you know, the realities of aging.

And so we're just kind of getting to that point where we're starting to wonder, you know, what do we need to do for ourselves? What do we need to have in mind? What should we -- how should we plan for it? That kind of stuff. I bought a long-term care insurance policy when I was, I think, 25 years old, and I do not recommend that anyone else do that.

I don't regret my decision. I still have it. I have one for me, I have one for my wife. But I don't think that anyone else should do that. Let me explain why. And I'll get back to the bigger question of how do you plan for long-term care. And I think with things like health care, I try to make a distinction.

People say, "I want to have government health care." Wait a second, do you mean sick care or do you mean health care? And so with long-term care, we need to specify, are we talking about long-term care or are we talking about long-term care insurance? And so let me just make the quick comment on insurance and then go back to the long-term care.

Years ago, I was an insurance agent, had an insurance license, et cetera. Long-term care insurance was on the market. It had come out, was being sold around. But there was a massive industry change going on. When the product first came out, the insurance companies dramatically underestimated the risks that they were going to face in terms of the costs, the actual claims that they were going to take.

And so it used to be that you could buy a long-term care insurance policy that had an unlimited benefit account where you could say-- it used to work as you would say, "How much monthly benefit do you need?" And you would say, "$5,000 a month of monthly benefit," or whatever.

And then, "How long do you want it?" And you could buy one for five years or you could buy one that had an unlimited benefit value. And the company that I worked for at the time, they ended those accounts because just like every other company was ending it, they were like, "We're not going to put ourselves on the hook for unlimited benefit values." And they gave us a few weeks of warning and I sold hundreds-- I think like 120-- I can't say hundreds because that would be multiple-- I think like 120 or 130 long-term care insurance policies in the course of like two or three weeks.

It was a nice paycheck that month. And I went ahead and bought one for me and I bought one for my wife at that time. And I still have it. And that insurance policy has an unlimited benefit account value. I started with $3,000 a month. I think I'm up to $4,700 a month.

Every day I get turned into a vegetable. My wife has a policy that will provide for $4,700 a month of long-term care benefits for the rest of my life for as long as I live. And I like that. I consider that valuable because I can't get disability income insurance.

And so I view it as basically a poor replacement but a support of disability income insurance, proper disability income insurance policy. But those policies don't exist anymore. And the way that long-term care insurance planning works now is you basically choose an amount of wealth that you want to insure and protect against.

And so for somebody who is in, say, 50s or something like that who is sitting down and looking at amount of wealth, looking at a risk of long-term care insurance, we can do some mathematical calculations. And in some cases, a long-term care insurance policy can be appropriate. But for long-term proactive planning for a young person, I don't think insurance plays any role whatsoever.

So that's my clear and direct answer is I don't think for you and your husband, if you're in your 20s and your 30s, I don't think long-term care insurance plays any role whatsoever at this point in time. You have three basic jobs for you to focus on in terms of providing for a good long-term care plan.

Job number one is become wealthy. If you are wealthy, then you can pay for any kind of long-term care that you need. And there was always years ago, and we're going back 10 years ago when I first started in that business, sorry, we're going back 15 years ago, I did this certification in long-term care planning.

And I dropped the designation. I don't use it anymore. But I had this designation. I went through this class. And one of the things that we talked about was basically we ran the numbers. And if somebody had zero -- this is not up to current inflation, but this was the numbers at the time.

If somebody had anywhere from about $0 of retirement savings up to about a million-ish dollars of retirement savings, then they couldn't afford any kind of long-term care insurance because they didn't have enough money even for retirement. And again, changes, variation, these are ish numbers, kind of loosey-goosey. But zero to a million bucks was always the number that I used where I said, you know, you don't need -- you can't afford long-term care insurance because you don't have enough money for retirement in the first place.

Then from about a million to $3 or $4 million, that was where there was a clear and compelling need for long-term care insurance because somebody could be positioned for a really great retirement, but if they had long-term care, a long-term care event, then it would disrupt their entire financial plan.

And that was where long-term care insurance was a perfect product fit and a placement. And then if you had more than, you know, $4-ish million, then I don't think you needed long-term care because in most cases, you would have plenty of money to pay for any long-term care expenses under virtually all scenarios.

Now, some of those people still bought long-term care insurance because, well, why not? It made sense. But you didn't need it. So when you're in your 20s and 30s, your primary goal should be to just make a financial plan that's going to result in our having plenty of money.

And if you have a financial plan that's going to result in you having plenty of money, then you're in good shape. You don't need any kind of insurance for it. And that's totally doable when you're in your 20s and your 30s. Less doable if you're 60 years old and broke, but totally doable when you're in your 20s and 30s.

The second thing you want to be focused on is maintaining your health. And this is where we are fortunate to live in a world where we're changing focus. So recently I read Dr. Peter Atiyah's book, Outlive, new book. And he seems to be the loudest voice on this subject at the moment, kind of popularizing a lot of the principles.

One of the points that he makes in his book is that he's trying to create a system of medicine where we look at medicine 3.0. And basically the idea is we're not just focusing on expanding people's life spans, keeping them alive longer, but we're focused on enhancing people's health spans, keeping them alive and keeping them active for a much longer period of time.

And I've been super interested in this for about the last 5 to 10 years, and I see a lot of good research coming out. And so if you care about long-term care, I think the best thing you could do is focus your own personal attention on your health rather than on insurance.

And so take the money that you would spend on insurance policies and focus on putting that money into health longevity plans. Make sure that you're getting lots and lots of consistent movement and exercise. Make sure that you're getting really, really high-quality nutrition. Make sure that your brain is being stimulated and activated, that you're doing hard mental work every single day to keep yourself smart, keep your brain engaged, et cetera.

Make sure that you're engaged in a strong social network where you have things to look forward to. Make sure that your relationships are healthy and strong and vibrant, et cetera. And if you do these things, you can forestall a lot of the risks of long-term care, especially physically. A lot of the reasons that people need long-term care insurance policies and why they make claims are often things that could be prevented, especially if you have decades to work on preventing them, building up strong muscle mass, building up strong bodies, maintaining balance, et cetera.

And so find health practices and lifestyle practices that enable that for the long term. And the third thing is that the most reliable form of long-term care is going to be the social dynamics. And so I don't see a long-term care insurance policy on the marketplace today. Come at me with, please, insurance agents, if I'm wrong, please send me some policies and I'll look at them.

But to my knowledge at the moment, I don't see a long-term care insurance policy today that I think makes a lot of sense from an insurance company for someone in your situation of what you've described to me. But I also myself have five children, and I am building a family culture that I hope will endure through the decades and will result in our having a very strong family culture that I will enjoy for my entire lifetime.

And I have watched this work out in my own family over the generations. Earlier in the call before you came on, I was saying to someone else how I watched and helped my parents care for their parents consistently over the course of many years. They never needed long-term care insurance because my dad built a house that had an apartment in it for my grandparents to live in.

He moved them across the country to be close, lived next door to us for many years, and then in the house. And then we cared for them all the way through. And so I've watched that happen. My father had seven children, and there's not a single one, one is dead, but not a single one of the remaining six who wouldn't do exactly the same thing for my parents.

If my parents need care, they're not going to go off and claim on an insurance policy. They're going to be in one of our houses with some of us taking care of them. There's just no question about it. And so these social networks and social dynamics, I think, are much more reliable than insurance policies because I watched that industry implode.

And all of those policies, like I said, I still have my insurance policy because who knows, it may turn out. It doesn't cost me much, but at the end of the day, my long-term care plan is to focus on building wealth so that I have money to pay for care if I need it, to focus on building strong levels of health and make it a lifestyle so that when I grow old I have good muscle mass, I have good aerobic capacity, my heart is working well, my blood work is in line, I've got great balance and coordination, etc., and then to have a bunch of children and build a strong family culture where we love each other, we care for each other, etc., so that I don't have to worry about being kicked off to an old folks' home and have my insurance policy pay for it because to me that seems pretty miserable, especially when you have time to build the alternative.

So those are my thoughts, Beth. Great. Yeah, that's super helpful. I will say too, I know you read the book "Deep Nutrition" a while back on one of your episodes, so I read that from your recommendation and it was definitely a great read. Good, good. Yeah, nutrition and motion and activity is the foundation and that should be where our focus should be being spent.

I think that it seems to me, maybe this happened in years past, I used to follow some of the longevity people, but it seemed like at the time it was all about calorie deprivation and that was basically it. It's like how can you live on a starvation diet in order to live long?

But it seems today like there's a lot of people really focusing on it, doing some good medical science, and so I'm optimistic that if you and I at our ages will stay focused on it, that we'll arrive in our 80s and 90s and 100s and 110s and 120s with a much stronger foundation to enjoy our later years.

I don't think there's any fundamental physiological reason why our bodies aren't capable of being strong and healthy far into our hundreds. Right. Yeah, that's the goal. Go for it. All right, we close out today with "In the Great State of California." Go ahead. Well, hey, Joshua. First, congrats on coming up on 10 years.

Thank you. That's crazy to think it's been that long, but I've been listening to you probably for the last six or seven, and I'm also going to second thank you for your courses. One of your courses in particular is particularly germane to my question, that being your career and income course.

I've really set my sights on boosting my income because that's the biggest lever that I really control right now. And I think I finally have an opportunity where I might be able to really substantially boost my income. And I'm wondering what strategies and tactics that you have for negotiating compensation because I'm at the point now where an offer will be incoming, and if it's relevant or if it would change your approach to how you would negotiate here, I will be dealing directly with the founder of the company.

And I'm happy to provide, I don't know, any other information or numbers that might be relevant while still remaining somewhat anonymous. Yeah. What's the industry and your potential job classification? So the industry is we'll call it health and wellness. And my job classification essentially would be somewhat of a franchise business consultant.

So the role would be me. Initially I was recruited for a franchise sales opportunity selling the franchise territory rights, but I used to work for their top competitor and I ran the most profitable franchise location. So essentially what they want me to do here is come on board, open a couple of franchise locations and use them basically as a measure to basically attract franchise investors.

So I'll be operating franchise locations and then selling the territories and then coaching owners and managers to run them profitably. And how do you anticipate your actual income is going to be structured? Is this salary? Is this sharing of productivity? What do you think is the most obvious solution?

Well, this is where it's highly negotiable. Initially the franchise sales role was entirely mission-based. It's high commission, about $20,000 per franchise unit sale. But since they want me to kind of have this dual role, they're open to offering a base salary as well. Kind of the path they laid out was they want to sell 50 franchise units per territory they have per region.

They have 10 regions. So 50 times 20,000 is the path to the seventh figure. Hopefully sometime in the next one to three years, depending on how fast I can do it. So that's kind of where we're at right now. I threw out a base salary number for them. Basically I just want to collect the profitability on the first location.

So I'll be opening the first location just to pay for me, so to speak. But since it's so open in negotiation, it's just much different than any other negotiation I've kind of gone through before. So I'm really not sure how to approach it. Yeah. In terms of negotiation, a basic principle that I myself think is valid, you judge, but I think this is valid, is just to try to approach every negotiation by assuming that all parties involved are acting in good faith and that we're trying to make sure that everybody wins.

We need a win-win deal in every negotiation. And so we're going to assume that everyone's acting in good faith. Now, obviously that's not always the case, but let's assume it as a point of beginning. And so I want to be very clear in coming in, what's in it for me?

What am I trying to accomplish? What's important to me? What's in it for the other party? What's in it for my boss here? What is he trying to accomplish? What is important to him? And try to get clear on that. Try to understand what he wants and what I want.

And then think, what would I be willing to do if I'm in my situation? And what would I be willing to do if I'm in his situation? And this sounds elementary, but I don't know of any better way to do it. Because no matter, I think that the false idea that many people have about a negotiation is that if somehow I can make this deal work in my favor, then if I can make this deal work in my favor and screw over my boss, then I'm going to win.

But it's not the case because every single negotiation is continual. Nothing ever gets closed. We may wind up this particular conversation, but if our deal doesn't work for him and for me a year from now, then the whole deal is going to fall apart. It's all done for. So we have to really understand what's in it for me and what's in it for him so that we create a deal that will endure the test of the years.

It has to work now and it has to continue to work. And the way that we approach a negotiation, meaning operating in good faith with openness, transparency, just clear communication, accuracy, et cetera, is going to basically set the stage for how we approach our relationship even a year from now, a couple years from now, et cetera.

Let me use a metaphor to try to make this point. Let's imagine that I bamboozle my wife into marrying me. I come into a marriage relationship and I use coercion. I use – what's the word that means? Lying. I'm not honest. I'm not transparent. I'm not clear. I sell her a version of myself that isn't true.

And she comes into it and she sells a version of herself that isn't true to me. She makes all these representations about who she is and what she's doing and what she's going to do for me, et cetera, and we negotiate our way into marriage. So now we're married.

And then all of a sudden we start to find out that, hey, maybe there was a little bit of dishonesty here in our entrance into marriage. Regardless of the contractual arrangement of marriage, regardless of that, we're still – that marriage is doomed. And it's doomed at some point because it wasn't founded on mutual care, mutual respect, working together, shared vision, shared outcome, et cetera.

Now, on the other hand, if I come into a relationship with my wife and we're honest about who we are, obviously I think that it would be certainly appropriate to play – to exercise some skills of attraction, some skills of seduction, some good interpersonal skills to engage with one another, treating each other politely, wooing one another.

That's all appropriate. But fundamentally we want to make sure do we have a shared vision, a shared common outcome as far as our relationship? Do we share principles and we're very clear and honest with one another about what you're looking for, about for what I'm looking for, et cetera?

We can come into the marriage relationship, sign the marriage license, and that's just the beginning of a long and healthy relationship. And in the context of that marriage, along the way, we can adjust and adapt to one another. We can renegotiate all of the things along the way. And the negotiation happens normally and easily because it's simple.

I'll give just a few examples. I've always been uncomfortable with the way that I've heard people talk about marriage pre-marriage counseling. I'm not opposed to pre-marriage counseling, but fundamentally I'm opposed to the concept that many people have of pre-marriage counseling as a way of laying out agreements because this is so silly, meaning we sit down and say, "Okay, you're going to clean the bathrooms and I'm going to cook breakfasts," or, "You're going to provide this and I'm going to do that," or, "You agree to have two children and I agree to have two children," things like that.

That kind of shallow approach to marriage planning or marriage counseling or even relationships, as far as I'm concerned, has no relevance with the reality of a marriage. In the reality of a marriage, at least just in my own marriage with my wife, we don't have any formal agreement about what we do or don't do.

We basically just work together fairly smoothly and I'd work and she works and we do it, but it's not a contractual agreement that I'm going to clean the bathrooms. We have our norms, but those norms change from time to time. They change based upon the situations that we're going into, et cetera, and so there's no contract that we look through and say, "You said you were going to clean the bathrooms and now I've got to clean the bathrooms." Rather, "Do the bathrooms need cleaning?

Are you capable of cleaning? Is that the appropriate thing for you to do or is it the appropriate thing for me to do?" Generally, we don't even talk about it. It just happens. The same thing should occur in a good quality business relationship. Coming into the business relationship, we want to engage in some proper wooing of one another.

We want to represent ourselves in the best possible light. We want to demonstrate that we're capable of working this out. But at its core, it's not so much what's on the paper or what the specific agreement is. Rather, it's about the importance of the shared relationship that we're going to work in, the buy-in to the vision, and where we're going over the next 10 years.

That's the principle or the environment which I think we should approach a negotiation is that you're looking for a big win. That big win is not going to be a product of this particular contract. That big win is going to be a product of this relationship over the course of the next decade.

As you approach the relationship, you want to get very clear on what you want. "I want a seven-figure income. I believe that I'm capable of providing these particular benefits and features. I can do this work. I think that this is a reasonable pace. This approach to compensation seems really fair to me.

I think I should have a salary because that salary shows me that my boss has skin in the game, that he's not just all commission. But on the other hand, I don't want too much of a salary because I really want a big commission rate because I want to win.

Or a potential business partner, here's what I think is in it for you. Here's what I think you want. Is that what you want?" Naturally, when two people operating in good faith talk about that, discuss what's in it for each of them, lay out what they are looking for, etc., then the details should emerge fairly naturally.

And then if the details wind up being wrong in the first pass, meaning that you lay out this plan and let's say it's a base salary of X dollars and $20,000 per location, etc., and then all of a sudden you're three months into it and you discover that it's not working, then because of the way that you initiated the relationship, you can come back to the negotiating table and you and he can pull out the previous contract and tear it in half and you can start over again because you have the relationship at its core.

So that's the best advice that I can give because I think that's what has always worked and what does always work. Is that your job is to help him win, his job is to help you win, and as you build the relationship, you have skills, you have alignment of vision, and the numbers should be fairly natural and obvious.

And then you, by knowing what you want, which is opportunity, you'll naturally take more risk with your income or more perceived risk, meaning I'll take more commission because it's going to be reliant on you to produce, and then your boss in that scenario will be happy to give you a higher rate because you're taking on more risk as long as he's still winning.

And so without, I can't go any further into specifics, but that to me is what is so necessary, is that focus on win-win, looking out for the other's needs, clearly articulating how you're going to serve one another, and then building the relationship in an environment of trust and confidence so that if the specifics turn out to be inaccurate right now, that you can just come back to the negotiating table six months from now and renegotiate the agreement in whatever way is necessary.

Thank you. That makes a lot of sense because I feel, I'm confident that I do have a lot of value to provide, that this is going to be, or can be, a win-win scenario, and nobody wants to be a loser in the negotiation. So I feel confident there, but I agree I've got to get really clear on what it is I want, and I guess if I leave with honesty and transparency, then coming back to the table to have another discussion is not really an issue because it was always transparent from the get-go.

One thing, one follow-up question, the reason I guess I have a little bit of trepidation, one, it's a big opportunity, so that's part of it, but the other part is I'm trying to avoid having a defensive posture coming into it because I just left my last two or three roles, offered high performance, high reward situations, and it didn't pan out to be as true as it was promised to be.

So I don't know. Do you have any, and I guess as a result of that, I've also kind of chronically undervalued my contribution, so do you have any advice to avoid having a defensive posture from being, one, burned in the past, and two, undervaluing your contributions previously? Begin by collecting as much evidence or data as you're capable of.

So if there's any parallel or any analog to this industry or to this position, try to reach out to somebody else. A friendly lunch with somebody who's in something like this on the other side of the country or a phone call or something can really help you to give you some inside perspective on it.

And as you know from taking my work, I just think people don't do that. They don't pick up the phone and call someone. And so look around for someone who does something like this, again, on the other side of the country, go see them, call them up, try to get some kind of inside information or some knowledgeable person who's around the industry in some way to give you a little advice, give you a little accurate up-to-date information.

In terms of previous opportunities or these previous issues, then assuming that there's no reason to conceal this from your potential business partner, then I think I would ask them outright and say, "Here's where I'm coming from. I had these two opportunities. Here's what happened. I delivered and my boss didn't.

So I'm really concerned about how do we make this work." And to strengthen you in that, I want to remind you afresh that the single most difficult thing that every business owner, every CEO, every executive faces is finding high-quality talent. It's very difficult and yet they can't grow if they can't do it.

It's very hard. That's why CEOs pay recruiters 50% of the starting salary to find someone. So when you're hired in a high producer capacity, someone who's capable and effective, etc., when you're hired into those kinds of positions, they're paying a lot of money to find you. That's how important you are and that should strengthen you.

So you have – they need to – your boss has to sell himself to you just like you have to sell yourself to him. My tired – not tired, I guess. It's simple. Employees compete against other employees and employers compete against other employers. You are not in competition with your boss.

Your boss is in competition with all of the other opportunities around and he needs high-quality, motivated, industrious, effective, honest employees and workers, etc., in order for him to reach his goals. So he's got to attract you just like you have to attract him. So if you've been burned twice over with your boss not actually delivering, then you need to grill this potential boss on how are we going to measure your delivering.

Here's what I think I can do. I have unbounded confidence in myself because I know my work ethic, I know my dedication to learning and to mastering the material and to practicing and to never quitting. I know that. But what I don't know is if my boss is going to be as committed as I am.

So boss, I'm going to be committed to you, but here's what has happened the last two times. How can I be confident that you're going to be committed to me? And that's a perfectly fair question and puts you in the right situation. Perfect. It makes sense to me. I have no issue being transparent and just brutally honest about what the case was in the past because it is the capital T truth.

Right. I guess what I would seek to encourage you with in closing is just what I said, and this is for any listeners. Always recognize that when you go out looking for a job, yes, you need a job. But much more than you need a job, your employer needs an employee.

And so you are a person of value. And so the way that you navigate this system is, first of all, you don't fake anything. You genuinely qualify yourself. You become qualified for the work that you want. That qualification comes from your work ethic, your skills, your knowledge, your ability, et cetera.

You have to be able to do the job, but that's something you can do. You can acquire the knowledge. You can practice the skills. You can get the credentials. You can build the self-confidence or whatever it is. Now your boss needs you. And, again, the hardest job that anybody has or any employer has is in finding good quality employees, good quality people who will work and help him achieve his goals.

I have coached a lot of executives, and the most difficult factor is always this. How do we find good people? How do we find people who have it? So if you have those skills, you're honest, you're hardworking, et cetera, and you can do the job, then you need to profile those things and recognize that you are valuable.

And as long as you are skilled in getting the conversations and getting the interviews, et cetera, and then in articulating how and why you're capable of doing it, you're not in competition with your employer. Your employer is in competition with all of the other potential employers. And with that, we close today's Friday Q&A show.

Thank you all for listening. It's been a pleasure to be back with you. Sorry, I've been away on vacation. I'll talk more about that coming up soon. This is an exciting time in the history of radical personal finance. As I said, July 15, 2023 will be exactly 10 years to the date of when I recorded the first episode of the podcast.

We're coming up on episode 1,000 fairly soon here. A little bit off schedule. I was hoping to have 1,000 done on July 15, but I stopped that to do some other important things. So it'll be in the next couple of months, we'll be at episode 1,000. And I just want to say thank you.

Thank you for being here. If you'd like to join me on next week on Friday's Q&A show, go to patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance, and I would love to speak to you then. 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. traditions.

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