The holidays start here at Ralph's with a variety of options to celebrate traditions old and new. You could do a classic herb roasted turkey or spice it up and make turkey tacos. Serve up a go-to shrimp cocktail or use Simple Truth wild-caught shrimp for your first Cajun risotto. Make creamy mac and cheese or a spinach artichoke fondue from our selection of Murray's cheese.

No matter how you shop, Ralph's has all the freshest ingredients to embrace all your holiday traditions. Ralph's fresh for everyone. Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.

My name is Joshua. I am your host. Today is Friday, August 11, 2023. And on this Friday, as we do on any Friday when I can arrange the appropriate recording equipment, we have live Q&A. You call in, talk about anything that you want. Workshops like Call & Talk Radio.

And if you'd like to join me on one of these Friday Q&A shows, do so at patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance. We begin with Eric in Kansas. Eric, welcome to the show. How can I serve you today? Hi Joshua, thanks so much for taking the call. I love what you do. My question is around more so the career aspect of some of the things you talk about.

I've listened to a good number of the old episodes and I hear people talking about a career and income course. You've mentioned it quite frequently with other callers. And so I wondered if you could, if you had any plans on maybe making that available again or if that's something that you've closed off completely.

And the reason is because I've been working in a particular industry in the insurance industry. Some of those alphabets after your name are very familiar to me. And I've just gotten maybe bored with the industry and looking for a career change, but just wanting to have a good framework on how I might process my next step.

I make decent money, so that's not an issue. But just looking to see what my next move might be for the next maybe five to ten years. Yeah, I have been planning to release that course and I'll tell you why I took it off the market. When I sat down and started doing private courses after years of doing various things to try to figure out how to make money on radical personal finance.

And once I gave up my vendetta to try to do everything with just the free open source listener support stuff. When I sat down, I said, I don't have any interest in talking about stuff that's well covered, but I would have interest in talking about stuff that's the most impactful.

And I said, where should I begin? And I said, well, the single thing that is not discussed by financial planners that should be discussed is the importance of your career and your income. And to me, it's obviously it's the most blindingly obvious thing when you say it out loud, but you will go through all of your training, all of your personal finance books and whatnot.

Nobody talks about it. It seemed to me years ago that nobody talks about it. Maybe they talk about it now. I've heard people talk about it. It's like if you want to help people to become wealthy, the very first thing that you need to do is to help them to get a job that they like, that's a good fit for them where they can do well in it, and then to make as much money as they possibly can for as long as they possibly can.

Those are the two components of it. You want your income to be as high as possible, but you also want it to come in for as long as possible. And that means that you can't just do something that you're doing just for money for the short term. You need to do something that's a good fit for you so you can build a 60, 70, 80-year career out of something, and then you want that thing to be a very high paying, and you want to approach it strategically.

And so I sat down and I wrote from scratch what I called my career and income course. And when I started, so when I released it, when I recorded it, I had a great number of students signed up for it, and I went through it and I did it, and I sold it for a while, but I only got a little bit of feedback from it.

And I was a little bit annoyed about that, not bad at anybody, but I was just like, "Was it good?" Like, this was not my area of professional training. I had all this professional training and financial planning, and I thought, "I think this stuff is really good and really useful and whatnot," but I just wasn't sure.

And so I was also, over time, I was kind of embarrassed by what I perceived as the low production quality that I had focused on. In all my stuff, I'm good at focusing on content, and I felt like the market means meant that I needed to put in B-roll and make everything look nicer and snazzier, etc., and I wanted to do that.

So anyway, I pulled the course from the market because I was a little embarrassed about the production quality of it. And then when I mentioned this publicly one time, all of a sudden, a bunch of my students reached out to me and sent me email after email after email, which was very gratifying, of saying, "No, Joshua, the course was fantastic." And sometimes they show up in Friday calls of, "I've doubled my income," "I've tripled my income," but I've got stacks of personal emails even more just saying about how great it was.

And so getting that feedback that took a while to come in, because this was years ago when I first released it, getting that feedback that, "Yes, this stuff that I taught is working for people," has increased my confidence about the value of those ideas that I shared. And so I am intending to re-record it, and I am intending to release it, because it definitely is, I consider, a cornerstone of financial success.

And as I've taught publicly here on the podcast, before I ever do financial planning with people, I always encourage them, "You've got three big decisions to make. Number one, you have to decide who you're going to live with," which is why a focus on relationships is really important. If you want to get married, get married.

If you want to have children, have children. If you want to be close to mom and dad, get close to mom and dad. If you want to be far away from mom and dad, get far away from mom and dad. Just do it. And then do that before you get out of debt or do anything else.

Just make those decisions. Number two is, where do you live? Because after the people that you live with, the place that you choose to live drives your lifestyle. And so, if you want to live in the mountains, go to the mountains. If you want to live by the beach, go to the beach.

If you want to live in another country, go. Number three is, then, what do you do for work? And so, you should get very clear on what you're doing for work and move aggressively in that direction. And I feel like this framework puts things into a proper perspective, because there's always a tension, you know, where someone says, "I'm getting out of debt," or "I've got student loans," or "Should I take out student loans?" etc.

And while I'm not opining dogmatically on debt here, the point is that if you can get into a career that's a good fit for you, and you can set up a lifestyle that's a good fit for you, then your ability to do long-term planning is built on a solid foundation.

And everything else, where you just focus on financial planning and whatnot, if those things aren't solid, you're building on shifting sand. And you can't build long-term plans until those three things are done. And so, I have a passion for trying to help people make those decisions intelligently, effectively, etc.

And so, back to the career, it comes down to kind of what you're talking— or personally, it comes down to the process of choosing a career as intelligently as possible, with as much foresight as possible, choosing something that's a good fit for you, or that you think might be a good fit for you.

And then, as you're in it, then we move into systematically enhancing that career, really intentionally, so that you move very quickly up through the income ranks. And that's the basic thesis of my course. That's the basic thesis of everything that I do. So, yes, it is coming in the future.

Okay. Great, great. Thank you. Tell me about your situation, though. Well, right now, I've been in the insurance industry on the production side, working with— You can say it. You're an insurance agent. That's fine. Yeah. You don't have to run away from those words. It's fine. Well, I'm actually not the owner agent, but I am— That's fine.

You're an insurance agent. Fine. Yeah, I'm an insurance agent. And so, kind of accidentally, in a way, kind of dropped into this career. And it's been rewarding. I've had some great experiences and made some good things happen. But now that some of those bigger questions are coming up— I called last week about home purchasing.

So now, as we're considering making some steps in terms of a long-term commitment and where we want to be, I feel like that decision was most important before we got into changing jobs, for a number of reasons. So now that we've made that decision and we've got a clear picture of where we want to be in terms of family and stuff like that, now I'm willing to see what else is out there.

Because, I mean, I've had my head down in this industry for 10-plus years, and it's been good to me, but I'm not aware of what else is out there, what else is available. So that's where we are now. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there are three basic strategies that you can use, and you should use all of these, to try to guide yourself if you're thinking you might be interested in moving in a different direction.

So strategy number one is introspection. Introspection just simply means observing what you yourself think about, what you yourself feel, what you yourself experience. And my simple way—I've told this story publicly, and I have more on this in the course, but I'll just give the stuff—the public story—is just making a list of things that you think you might be interested in, and not censoring yourself, being open to it.

So, you know, make a list on the Notes app on your phone, you know, keep a separate notebook or page somewhere, just make a list. And as you pass through life, any time that you see something that interests you, then write it down. And if possible, if you have any idea of why it might interest you, then make a note of it.

And so I'll just share, you know, a few random ones that I used to have on my list, and things that I still keep—I still keep this list, so that I have backup plans in case I want to go on. But I noticed when I was younger that I enjoyed traveling, and so I thought, "You know what?

I think it'd be fun to work in the hotel industry, because I like—my undergraduate degree is in international business. How wouldn't it be fun to work for, you know, some hotel somewhere, work for Hilton Hotels on an international basis, or something like that? That would be interesting." And I like talking to people, I enjoy that.

So even if I were a concierge or some kind of front-facing thing, I've always been good at dealing with people, I don't get upset. And so I thought that would be really interesting to me. I used to—I still enjoy spending time in coffee shops, and I thought, "Wouldn't it be fun to work in a coffee shop?

What a great atmosphere it would be. I would enjoy it, enjoy the atmosphere." I thought, "Wouldn't it be fun to be a truck driver?" Because again, well, I like to travel across the country, and I like sleeping in cars, and so being a truck driver seemed really interesting. But then also, then you look—those are very simple, just straightforward jobs that are easy to get.

But then I also noticed and pay attention to when things— when along the way, I—there are things that are more interesting to me. So for example, I have a friend of mine. I interviewed him years ago on the podcast. But my friend is a turnaround—was, is, and was a turnaround specialist.

He had had a big career in the corporate world. He'd retired. And then basically, he and his friend started buying companies, and he just did this turnaround work. And I thought, "Wouldn't that be awesome to be such a skilled businessman that I can come in, find a company that's struggling, and then turn it around?" And I noticed what appealed to me about it.

So things like the seasonality of it. I noticed that I really liked the idea of working really hard for three, four, five years, whatever it takes to come into a company and turn it around, and then take a year or two off. I love the seasonality idea of that.

I like the business side of it. I see business as systems, and so it works in my brain. When I was younger, I noticed that I really liked—I admired the lifestyle of an author. So I always imagined myself, and I put, "What if I were an author? I would really enjoy that." It's kind of a solitary pursuit, but I can go around the world.

I can research things. I can write things, etc. I used to love listening to talk radio. And so I noticed—I said, you know, I thought—I listened to this local talk radio station, and I'm not going to say the name of the show, because they're pretty vulgar. But I used to listen to these guys just get on a microphone for three or four hours a day.

And I would listen to them at the time I was working on a farm, driving a tractor across the field. And I would listen to them while I'm driving my tractor. And I just thought, you know what? I really enjoy this scenario. And so to show up to a studio and banter on a microphone for four or five hours is not difficult for me.

And so those are just things that I've noticed for myself across the way. And if you do this over the course of weeks, months, years, you'll make a pretty decent list. And again, the key is don't censor it. I can pretty easily say today, because I've grown in confidence, I can pretty easily say today that, "Hey, I think it'd be fun to work at Panera Bread, but I was embarrassed about that when I was a 23, because I'm supposed to be a business guy.

But I just thought it would be fun to be in that atmosphere." And so introspection can lead you to understand some of the things that you're interested in, some of the things that you're attracted to. And if you can put those things down on paper, and you wind up with a list of 50 or 20 or 75 different things, and especially if you can put the job and then put a little phrase or sentence saying what attracts you to it, and so you can get some sense of it, now you can create something that's really powerful.

And if you can get that list down on paper, you can coach yourself, because you can look at it and you can say, "What are some of the common themes of these different businesses or jobs?" And so things like, for me, again, I don't recommend it. I see the downsides of a vagabond lifestyle, but I've always been attracted to the idea of going from place to place.

I've always been attracted to the idea of learning new languages. I've been attracted to the idea of personal freedom. That's a central aspect of my themes. Other people's themes would be very different. You know, someone else might have a very clear vision of, "I'd like to wear a really nice suit every day and work in a downtown office tower," or whatever the things are.

And so you can see the themes of those. And then if you can put those on a paper, and you can see the themes, then you can extrapolate to step two, which would be, "Well, what are some ideas of jobs or businesses that might incorporate some of these themes?" So the first thing is introspection.

The second thing is external assessments. And so there's a whole world—I'm not current on it, so I'm not going to say any names— but there's a whole world of career tools that have been developed by coaches and organizations and whatnot to help you identify personality characteristics, interests, things like that, that can help expose you to different things that you yourself might be interested in.

Some of them are better than others, but I think that most of them are worth taking. And the great thing about career tools is that when you're taking them, they kind of expose you—if you keep your notebook handy and write down your own introspection list— they expose you to different ideas that you may or may not be interested in.

And what shocked me so much was after years of introspection and after 10 different jobs that I had done, I took for the first time a disk profile assessment, and I got the results back from it. I think it was the one that Dan Miller was promoting with his "48 Days to the Work You Love" stuff.

And I got the results back, and I look at the list of jobs that are recommended for me. And of that list—I forget now, so I'm speaking broadly— but it seemed like three-fourths of them were things that I had already done or specific things that were on my list.

And I thought, "Man, this is fantastic. I've already figured this out myself. I've tried this, I've tried this, I've tried this. This was a good fit. This was a good fit. This is what I'm doing now. This is on my list. This is on my list. This is on my list.

This is really great." And so I think the second thing, again, is those external assessments. And then the third thing that you can do is engage with a third party. And so if you engage systematically with a third party, an outsider, then that person can often give you ideas that you yourself are a little bit blind to.

And so that third party can be your wife, that third party could be your brother, that third party can be your best friend, that third party can be a co-worker, that third party can be someone that you know from college, the third party can be a professional coach, a career coach of some kind.

The third party can be and should be probably a long list of people, including people who are in and around the careers that you're interested in. The advice that I always give, sometimes people book me for consulting and they do it because they're interested in going to the financial industry.

And because I have some experience in that, I say, "Well, I'm talking to this recruiter and tell me straight and whatnot." And so I give them my opinions, of course, but one of the pieces of homework I always do is I say, "Lay out for yourself a list of the different models that you know." So you're interviewing with Edward Jones, great.

Well, interview with Edward Jones, interview with State Farm, interview with Northwestern Mutual, interview with Merrill Lynch, interview with your local RIA, interview, you know, say, lay out, interview with your local Primerica representative, like lay out for yourself, force yourself to go into the industry and figure out a dozen different perspectives in this industry.

And then reach out to people and go for an interview or go for a lunch and talk to people and engage with them. And so tell them a little bit about yourself and ask them where they think you would flourish. And then what I do is I try to ask people and say, you know, if you weren't doing what you're doing, what would, if you weren't working in your current industry, because, okay, you're a life insurance agent.

All right, if you weren't a life insurance agent, what would you go and do if you weren't a life insurance agent? Because most of us have our list of things that we're attracted to or that we've noticed. And so as a life insurance agent, I got annoyed that I couldn't cause, I couldn't, I didn't have ongoing contact with people that was set up from some kind of regular basis.

And so I would look at, you know, I had a client who had a big State Farm agency and I would look at his State Farm agency. It's like, well, his clients by law are required to have insurance. And how awesome is that? They have to have insurance. Or you work with someone who's an accountant and has a financial planning practice on the side.

You say, well, his clients need tax returns. And so he's got his clients in the office every single year. And so they're there, sitting there ready to speak to him. Or I would look at Rick Edelman and I would say, well, Rick Edelman has thousands and thousands of listeners to his radio show and to his books.

And so he's got this massive pool, etc. And so I knew those shortcomings of my previous career model. And so if you would ask me something like that, of course, I would tell you, people tell you. And so if you listen to people about what they're doing and then you listen to what they would do, it gives you more tools, more fodder for your introspection list.

And then ask them what they would go after and ask them what they think you should go after. And if you do that with enough people, you know, let's say over six months you meet with 50 people, which is pretty easy to do, you will find yourself with so many ideas and so many people.

And those are the people that lead to connections. Those connections, they're the ones who introduce you to people, leads you to jobs, job opportunities, business opportunities, etc. And you can do that really intentionally. So that's my basic model. Model number one is introspection. Model number two is external assessment.

And model three is third party interaction. And that third party interaction feeds number one. Number two feeds number one, etc. And along the way you can try things. And then if you set up your personal finances in such a way and you expect and you get yourself into a mindset of testing, the idea is let me go and test this thing and limit, you know, especially if you're at a point where, OK, I'm thinking about buying a house or whatnot.

If you know there's career changes coming up, what you want to do is you want to keep your outlay and your fixed expenses as modest as possible so that you have maximum flexibility. You have maximum flexibility to take a new job that's all on commission or start a new business where you may not make money for two years.

And then you want to keep your geographic flexibility as intact as possible as well. So you can go across the country and work for someone for a couple of years in a certain business and then you can come back and start another business. And then financially, especially if you have any tendency towards entrepreneurism, then it makes a lot more sense for you to keep your powder dry so that you can spend two hundred grand on a business, getting a business going rather than two hundred grand on a house.

And so you want to keep as much money available. It's better to rent a tiny little apartment somewhere and get your business going. And then you come back in five years and when you're making half a million a year, you can go ahead and buy the house that you actually want to be in.

And so that's how you integrate personal financial planning with the career search. But the testing model just simply says don't expect yourself to don't make a 30 year commitment to something. There's no way to know. You'll know vastly more after two months working in your industry than you will without that two months there.

This is why I have such a deep passion for helping young people to have jobs because a summer job or a Christmas break job or a Saturday job helps someone to have exposure to an industry that has a certain set of factors involved in it and without any kind of long term expectation that I have to do this for many years.

And spending a couple of weeks doing a certain business or doing certain job is enough to get a taste of it that for a thoughtful person will inform your life decisions going forward for the rest of your life based upon how much you liked it and how much you didn't like what exactly you were doing at that point in time.

Thank you. Thank you. That is very helpful and very... I felt like I knew some of those things but just having you lay it out in that kind of sequential, very strategic way, it really does help to just kind of clarify the different steps in the process. And that's one of the things that I've been doing, kind of a lot of introspection.

I've realized that I don't exactly enjoy working from home as much as I thought I would, but I do like the flexibility that it affords. And so even thinking about that, I enjoy colleagues. I enjoy the office chatter and all the stuff that goes on when you're, you know, getting up and putting on some clothes to go into the office.

But I've also realized that productivity suffers at times when I'm in that kind of environment because, you know, there's just a whole lot of other things going on. So it's been helpful to kind of think through. So I appreciate you sharing that with me and I look forward to, you know, whenever you decide to reshoot and reproduce that course.

I think it'll be super helpful. Yeah, thank you. And you're exactly right about that experience and I share that with you. And finding that right fit, I think, is important. The thing that I, the biggest negative right now for me in my business life is I feel very isolated and alone in the work that I do.

Because my company is me and a couple people that work with me on a casual basis, on a contract basis, etc. And so I miss that sense of camaraderie, miss that sense of being on a team, etc. I've told people, and I have no problem saying it publicly, if someone came along with the right job offer, with the right terms, the right industry, etc., I would seriously consider taking a job or getting involved in some other business different than what I'm doing simply because of that sense of camaraderie and teamwork.

I don't like to be alone all the time. But on the flip side, what I would not give up is I would not give up my freedom. And so there's this delicate balance that I would have zero interest in working for a company where I'm required to be in the office between eight and five in this particular office every year.

And so I don't go and look for jobs because I want to maintain my flexibility. But the cool thing is when you realize that, you can build more of it into your life. And so there are many jobs where you're on a team or many businesses and things that you can have where you're on a team, you're with a team, you have that sense of camaraderie, but you're not glued to an office chair during business hours.

And you still have the freedom and flexibility. And if you recognize that as what you're looking for, then you can plan for it. And if you're not yet qualified for a job that has that sufficient level of freedom, then you can qualify yourself for it. And the reason I am affirming what you're saying is I think for most people, this is the mixture that they're looking for.

And I find that a big reason people retire unnecessarily is simply due to lack of control over their schedule. And that if they were in a position where they simultaneously have a sense of camaraderie working with other people, even if they're an independent business, even if their own results are independent, right?

They're an insurance agent, they're in an office, etc. Just having that sense of camaraderie with other people brings a big value to life. But simultaneously not having all of their movements and positions and hours controlled. Adults should have sufficient freedom and autonomy that they can bring into their life and lifestyle the necessary level of flexibility.

And so if you can find, I think those are fundamental characteristics that lead to long-term happiness. In the corporate world, you can get there either with a corporation that has some flexibility worked into it, or by being at a senior level in that corporation where you are in a role in which you are held accountable exclusively for your results.

And that's the key. And so in order to get there, you have to be willing to bear the responsibility to be judged based upon your results, not based upon your time. So great stuff, Eric. I look forward to getting that course re-released. I've got several others in the pipeline before that, but I look forward to getting that out to you when I can.

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.

Don't lose out on your chance to get a Maverick X3. Visit Delamo Motorsports in Redondo Beach and get yours. Offer in soon. See dealer for details. We move on to the great state of Montana. Welcome to the show. How can I serve you today? Hey Joshua. I had a question to get your thoughts on when you think it would be appropriate to either travel further or pay more to hire a friend or someone from church or something like that in their business rather than going through, you know, like a big box store or a large contractor or something like that.

Are you talking about as an employee or somebody else has a job or has something that you want to buy? I guess or a service. Yeah, the latter. Where, you know, would you go drive an hour to go to a dentist if someone is a friend when you had a dentist 15 minutes away?

Or, you know, is it a dollar amount or percentage of time and like valuing how you would support a community member rather than going through, you know, the easiest or most convenient or cheapest option? It's a fascinating question. I don't know that. Let me think for a moment. I don't have a pre-prepared model or framework that could put a specific a specific number on it.

A specific number such as, you know, the amount of time it takes or the dollar amount, etc. I don't have that particular framework. Created but at its core, I think the level of motivation that you have for making that decision is going to go down to number one, the amount, the deep level of your personal motivation to see some kind of change happen in the world.

And then number two, the dollar amount or the impact of it. So if we recognize that when we spend money, that money is going to fuel certain things in the world. And when we make every buying decision, we're fueling either the world that we want to see or the world that we don't want to see.

And so your level of motivation to see the world changed is going to be your core thing. And I think that could be different for any one of us. Number two, it's going to come down to the dollar amount. That if you're, you know, to make an example, if you can contribute five dollars to a superior economy with a great inconvenience, then you're not going to do that.

On the other hand, when you're making significant decisions and you can contribute five hundred dollars or five thousand dollars to a superior economy, then you are going to be willing to deal with the hassle, etc. And beyond that, I don't know that I have a model for it. Tell me more about your actions and the things that you're like, what specifics of what you're thinking about.

Yeah, I mean, just the one, I guess two things I thought about. One was the dentist. Like I have a friend from church who, like I said, was a much further drive and I have an established care that's much closer. And in my mind, it's something where if it's someone that I'm friends with and someone part of a community that I belong to and that I care about, that it's a simple thing for twice a year to drive, you know, maybe an hour to go do it.

Or another thing that I thought about is I have another person that I'm somewhat friendly with. I mean, it's somebody that came over to help me finish the nursery at my house before my kid was born. So, you know, someone that's fairly close and they just started selling for Prime America and I need to get licensed.

So it's like, do I go through them and get a quote or do I go through one of the online services where I'm and again, I don't actually have a quote hand, but I'm sure I could get it. But, you know, the person behind it is someone that I care about.

So just trying to, you know, the perfectly financial or perfectly time efficient and optimal solution is probably not to go through those people. But if it's someone that you're invested in being successful, like I get emotionally invested, it seems like it's appropriate. But I just don't know where where do you draw the line?

It's kind of why I all that. Right. Well, to both of those seem like to me obvious things that you should do, meaning you should work with both of those people because we need a sense of community around us just to back up from what is an economic system and what makes such a big difference.

One of the great powers of modern economic systems, especially in the United States, or I assume that you are. One of the things that is so remarkable is we have figured out how to create a vibrant economy that allows untrusted persons to interact with one another freely and competently.

And it was not always that way. In ancient economies and in many cultures around the world today, the person that you're doing business with is much more important than and you needed to have some kind of connection. They needed to be a part of your ethnic group or your religion or your community, etc.

In order for you to do business with it, because there was no large there was no larger sense of community to fall back upon. You had this was your community. You didn't have a national government that you could depend upon. You had a king that stole tax money from you and use that to send your brother off to war somewhere on the other side of the continent.

And so you couldn't rely on the government. You could only rely on these people. And so there was a strong tribal preference for whatever tribe that you're interacting with in the United States. At least when I was growing up in the 80s and 90s, that was not that was not something we thought about.

We all identified ourselves as Americans and that was it. And there was certainly an in-group preference for Americans versus those people. But you know, you didn't think much about it. Everyone was pretty much in the same way and we all worked very hard to respect one another not to be very blanking on the word that means, you know, very accepting and not to compromise, etc.

Just to kind of find the neutral middle ground of everything. And so there was a distance feel necessary to build alternative economies. It didn't feel necessary to work with people that were within your group. It just felt like it was an opportunity to interact with others. And so the argument you would have made back in those days would have been, "Well, I go to my this dentist and this my dentist isn't a Christian.

So it gives me a chance to preach the gospel to him instead of patronizing your Christian brother from your church." Now, it sure seems to me that that world is gone. And so I don't think much about, I don't generally have much of a sense of American solidarity. Now we're fracturing in terms of our groups and as our national and state-level governments become increasingly impotent, then the ability now to rely upon our tribe becomes much more significant.

And so it's probably a healthy trend on the whole. It makes me sad because I really enjoyed that sense of American identity when it existed. But it's probably a healthy trend to focus more on your smaller local group and your smaller local tribe than back then. And so I think the key is that by investing into relationships with your money, you are investing into people and you can see the direct outcome of it.

And while you're not doing it to get something out of it, you are going to, when your time comes and your baby is in the hospital with a birth defect or you need a bunch of trash hauled out of your backyard or whatever it is, it's the people in your life that are going to be the key for you.

And so you could go to the dental clinic where nobody knows you, but you're not going to make an impact on that guy. Whereas if you go to the one where you know the guy, you're going to have a chance to deepen your relationship. And you're going to prove that you spend your money with those you care about.

And then similarly with your friend who is selling Prime America, I mean you could buy a life insurance, it's just a term life insurance policy. But why wouldn't you want the commission to go to somebody that you care about? Because that'll build the relationships on a deeper level. So to me those things are very much worth doing.

And then also just in terms of causes, things that you want to do. So when, I just didn't think of how much to share, but like things that are important to me is number one, if I can patronize somebody that I know, then in the first place, then I want to do that.

Assuming that they have a reasonable level of quality and whatnot. But more important, and that pays off in the long run because it can be really helpful. And you have the chance to impact people. I'll give an example, right? I have a chiropractor. A chiropractor is a Christian from the church that I go to and good chiropractor.

I take my family there and etc. Well, COVID came and the chiropractor's business collapsed. And so it gave me the chance to, I prepaid a significant number of chiropractic appointments because I had money and his business was collapsing. And that made a big difference in terms of the relationship.

And on the flip side, the benefits that I get just from the personal relationship are far worth, worth far more than going to somebody who's across the way. I have this thing where I don't always want to actually pay the money, but I really do believe that we should be happy to pay more to our friends and our family for their businesses rather than expect discounts.

Think about it. You have a friend that owns a restaurant and you say, "Oh, it's my friend's restaurant. We'll go there and he'll give us a discount on the food." Well, certainly that's his right and it's appreciated when he does that. But my heart should be that I'm going to my friend's restaurant and I'm happy to pay extra because and to make a big order because I want to see my friend's business succeed.

And so to me, that's the proper mindset that we should have towards our friend and our family who are in business and we should express that. The other thing I would just say is that if you want change to happen, you have to actually spend money. So things that I do, right?

I go a significant way out of my way to go and purchase as much of my food as I can from an organic farmers market rather than going to the grocery store. And the reason is that I want to see more regenerative agriculture happen and I want to see organic farmers where I know the source of my food and my family's food, where I know where it comes from rather than just wanting the cheapest deal.

I want higher quality. And so that's something that I do that is pretty inconvenient and yet to me it's something that I want to do because these are people that I want to support and I want to see more and more people join them in their agricultural practices, etc.

The flip side is that it felt really good when I was worried about food security and famine and whatnot. And of course, I'm still concerned about it because there's various things that you can look at but not as what doesn't seem as dire as it once did. We'll see what happens this year.

But when I'm thinking about famine and worried about that for my family, I feel really good about the extra work that I go through to buy directly from my farmers who I'm their best customer. I buy a lot. I always pay a little extra more than what they ask.

So I know that I'm at the front of the line if food is short. I know that I'm at the front of the line with the food that they are able to produce, etc. And so it may come back to help me in the long run. So I don't have anything more insightful to say other than that I think that we should do it.

And why should we spend our money with people that hate us or hate what we believe or hate what we stand for or hate how we live? And why should we invest our money into companies that hate us? And I don't publicly get involved in boycotts and whatnot, but I have a long list of companies that I avoid as much as I possibly can.

And I avoid giving money to them because they despise me as a man. But I'm also not a purist. I guess that would be the final thing I would say is that I myself am not a purist about it because I think that being a purist about it can limit your overall effectiveness in life.

And so there are compromises that I make and that we all make. And to me, that sense of moral purity that we would all love to have is a juvenile, non-realistic perspective that we're going to do the best we can 80% of the time. But 20% of the time, you're going to go, you know, if you need your teeth cleaned and you can't get it over the cross town, then this time you're just going to go to the local dentist and get your teeth cleaned.

Cool. I appreciate your thoughts there. It sounds like we're very similar in what we were thinking. So I appreciate just hearing that and how you do it. My pleasure. I'll think more about it. But if you can do it, patronize the people that you know and respect and build community because at the end of the day, that's what we all need.

Anything else? Nope. That's it. Thank you. Great. And with that, we wrap up our call. Just a short call today. Two callers. If you'd like to join me on next week's call, this happens sometimes. Last week, we had a long line of callers and was hustling to get through them.

This week, we had a short list of callers. So if you would like to join me next week, go to patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance. Patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance. Sign up to support the show on Patreon and you will gain access to the Friday Q&A shows. In addition, I would remind you that I'm running an August sale on personal consulting.

If you would like to work with me on a personal consulting basis, go to radicalpersonalfinance.com/consult. And then got a good number of signups coming in for the Panama event. I need to check and see what the number is that we're at. But I know we still have spots. And so if you are available in January of 2023, come to Panama on a Panama investment tour with me, with my friend Gabriel Custodiat, and with my friend Mikael Thorup.

It is going to be an amazing week together. We have an itinerary of classes planned. We have a bunch of events that are going to be great. We're going to be specifically profiling Panama, Panama's residency options, citizenship options, banking options, investment options. We're going to tour a gold storage facility.

If you're looking for a place to put some of your bullion, etc., it's going to be a great trip. And then beyond that, though, we're just going to be hanging out. And so the ticket that you are buying is for the trip. But it's fine with me if you just view it as a vacation and a networking event to come and spend time with us.

We'll talk about other countries. We'll talk about global options, etc. It's going to be a great trip. So go to expatmoney.com/radical, expatmoney.com/radical to sign up for that event. And I look forward to seeing you there. Hey, cricket customers. Max with ads is included with your cricket $60 unlimited plan at no additional cost.

Nice. Max is the streaming platform where you can watch Scoob, Meg to the Trench, the Nightmare on Elm Street collection and so much more. Remember me. Just log in with your cricket username and password to experience Max on all your favorite devices. We never seen this before. Max, the one to watch for a good scream with cricket.

Phone plan streams and standard definition programming subject to change. These terms and restrictions apply. See cricketwireless.com for details. The holidays start here at Ralph's with a variety of options to celebrate traditions old and new. You could do a classic herb roasted turkey or spice it up and make turkey tacos.

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