Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insights, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less. My name is Josh Ruchites. I'm your host. Today, I want to speak to you primarily about the topic of the value of private money as compared to public money.

But I want to introduce said topic with a discussion of how the value of money can change. Have you ever considered how a dollar becomes something different than a dollar based upon the circumstances of its generation? Let me give you some practical day-to-day examples. Let's say that you had a choice between two jobs, job A, paying you $100,000 per year, doing work that you don't particularly enjoy and don't think that you're particularly well suited for, and job B, paying you $100,000 a year, doing work that you enjoy and for which you are personally quite well suited.

Given the choice, I don't think there's anyone on the earth who would choose job A. Obviously, we want to choose a job that has work for which we are well suited and feel qualified and provides us with some level of enjoyment and appreciation if possible. Now, what's interesting though is that we can start to discount the value of the job and we find out quickly that people are willing to work more for less money based upon the attributes of the job.

So, for example, if I offered you job A, $100,000 a year, doing work that you aren't particularly interested in doing and it's not really well suited for you, and job B, paying you say $95,000 per year, doing work that you enjoy and are well suited for, I think the vast majority of people would clearly still opt for job B.

Now we could discount it further. $100,000 versus $90,000, I bet most people would still choose job B. But there's some number at which the choice changes. For example, if I offered you $100,000 a year, doing work that you don't really enjoy and aren't particularly well suited for versus say $30,000 a year, doing work that you enjoy and are well suited for, I think now the majority of people would opt for the $100,000.

That's due to two basic factors. Number one, there is a minimum amount of income below which life is not really feasible. If you're living at the poverty line and your income is equaling your expenses, then because of the pain of that, you find yourself highly motivated to go and earn more money in order to relieve the pain of poverty.

At the higher levels, if whatever options you're choosing among are all substantially above the level of your expenses, then it's much easier to appreciate those other lifestyle benefits, shall we call them, more than just the absolute dollar. The other thing that needs to be considered is that all work is not created equal.

It's not just as simple as kind of money versus money. For example, if I said $30,000 a year at a job that you like, but there is potential for that to increase in the future, possibly as soon as say two years, then a lot of people then would pursue something like that because of the potential for increase in the future.

Now, you can decide yourself how much you would discount based upon doing work for which you're well-suited versus work for which you're not well-suited. But let's give it another example. Let's say that I offer you two jobs. Job A pays you $100,000 a year, but requires you to sit in a particular chair, in a particular office, in a particular location each and every day, Monday through Friday, from 9 a.m.

to 5 p.m., and you must be in that chair at that desk in order to perform the work. Job B pays you $100,000 per year, and it requires you to be in that chair to perform the work, but it gives you the opportunity to choose which eight hours in a day you're going to work.

Now, if you wish to come in at four in the morning and work until two in the afternoon, that's acceptable, as is starting at 12 noon and working till 8 p.m. Most people would value that flexibility, knowing that it would allow them to go to the dentist at a convenient time for their dental cleanings and coach their kids' sports teams and things like that, and would immediately opt for job B as long as there's enough money in job B to cover their lifestyle, et cetera.

If it's $100,000, $100,000, obviously job B is going to be chosen. If it's $95,000 for job B and $100,000 for job A, okay, probably job B, with, again, the same caveats that if we're getting down low, it becomes much more challenging. There's a big difference between the numbers, or if we get towards poverty line, if it's $42,000 versus $48,000, well, now people are going to opt for the job A, the $48,000, because you need that extra $6,000 to live when you're at that level of income.

Meanwhile, if the offer is, say, between $200,000 for job A and $180,000 for job B, well, since there's a little bit more margin in the budget, most people would happily give up $20,000 in order to have that level of flexibility, as compared to somebody who couldn't give up $6,000 in order to have the level of flexibility, because you need the money for day-to-day expenses.

Now, we could go on with these examples, and they are important, and I would encourage you to consider them. Consider the value of being able to work remotely, work from home, work from travel, two or three days a week, as compared to having to be in the office five days a week.

For a lot of people, getting a work abroad job is one of the biggest things they can do to improve their lifestyle, and as I pointed out at the beginning of the pandemic, I think this is one of the best lifestyle improvements available to us, and I myself am grateful that today you don't have to go after some harebrained work from home medical billing or envelope stuffing business like was common at the turn of the century.

Today you can work just about any real job in any career from home. On the flip side, however, there are benefits to seeing people. I miss seeing people and working with people, and so maybe your job requires you to be at a location. Perhaps you're a teacher, and you have to teach in a classroom, but you get the benefits of the social contact with the students, social contact with your coworkers, feeling part of a team, doing something that matters to you.

Now it's worth it to you because of these other benefits. And we should consider as many of these benefits as we are able to identify as being important to us personally, because these things really matter. And once you get beyond the poverty level wages, they matter a lot. You want to do your very best to consider these in advance.

I have consulted with a significant number of high income earning people who have found intense dissatisfaction in the demands of their jobs, the lack of flexibility that their jobs offer. And over time, as your wealth increases, as your assets increase, as your income increases, every marginal dollar becomes worth less and less because you don't need it anymore and you feel the weight of these other factors very significantly.

Now I'm not going to dig deeply into taxes, marginal value of taxes, et cetera. Just know that there are other financial calculations that should be considered. What I want to turn to is one of the things that I think is the least discussed in this space, which is the visibility of your income and the visibility of your wealth.

I have a personal theory that the going ratio between the value of an invisible anonymous dollar is worth twice of the value of a visible non-anonymous dollar. Let me explain. What I mean is simply that if you can earn a dollar in a way that's not immediately connected to your name, to your face, to your likeness, to you yourself personally, if you can earn a dollar in some kind of somewhat anonymous business where you aren't particularly visible, every dollar that you earn in that capacity is worth about two dollars of income earned in a visible capacity.

Now let me try to justify that statement a little bit so that perhaps you will believe me. There are some obvious costs associated with visible earnings and some less obvious costs. The obvious cost is things like taxes and lifestyle to maintain, maintaining a reputation, living a certain way because of your lifestyle.

The less obvious costs are being targeted for your money by investment professionals, having friends and family ask you for money constantly, just going to sleep worried at night because of all the crazies that know that you have money. If you can avoid some of these costs that I'll go into in more detail here, I think that you should.

Let's start with the kind of obvious ones. The two big ones are taxes and lifestyle. Taxes first. Let's begin with an example of about a month ago. Here's Good Morning America. Dr. Shakira's tax fraud trial, the singer reaching a deal this morning, Aaron Koterski is back with the very latest on that.

Good morning, Aaron. Good morning to you, Lindsey. Shakira was supposed to go on trial for tax evasion today in Barcelona and prosecutors were seeking to put the pop star in prison. Instead, Shakira accepted a plea deal, admitting she failed to pay $16 million in taxes. The Spanish government agreed to a three year suspended sentence and a $7 million fine.

Shakira had long maintained her innocence, but said in a statement she decided to resolve the case with the best interests of my kids at heart. Shakira says she needs to move past the stress. The case turned on whenever, wherever Shakira lived between 2012 and 2014. At the time, she said her residence was in the Bahamas, but prosecutors said she spent most of her time in Spain while she was with Barcelona soccer player Gerard Pique, who's the father of her two children.

Shakira now says she wants to focus on her upcoming world tour and new album, both of which Robin, she said she is extremely excited about. So let's use this as an example here, because tax evasion, tax fraud, et cetera, is certainly something we want to avoid. But there's an enormous gray area that most people are not familiar with.

And this is especially hard in the United States, where our tax laws are much clearer. It's one of the benefits of citizenship taxation. We know that we have to report every dollar we earn, no matter where, no matter when, et cetera, to the US government if we are a US citizen.

And the clarity of that makes it simple. So either you do or you don't, and the consequences come with it. By the way, don't commit tax evasion. It's a dumb thing to do. You will never save enough money to make it worth it. And you spend your whole life looking over your shoulder, which dramatically diminishes the value of your dollars.

So don't do that. However, let me explain to you the Shakira case, because it's actually quite interesting, and it illustrates the concept that I am driving at. Shakira, obviously enormously successful pop star, makes enormous amounts of money. Well, she engaged in some very intelligent tax planning many years ago, and she transferred all of her property rights, her royalty income, into a business entity, I believe, in Luxembourg.

And Luxembourg has a favorable tax regime over things like intellectual property rights and royalties, et cetera. Their standard amount is to exempt about 80% of income from taxation, which drops you down to about a 5% tax rate. I believe that Shakira negotiated with the Luxembourg government and was able to get her tax rate down to 2%.

And so the total taxation on her income was 2%. Now, obviously, all of the income that was going to be paid out of that corporate entity in Luxembourg has to go to her. And so she engaged in some additional sophisticated tax planning. She established residency in the Bahamas by purchasing property there.

The Bahamas is a great place to establish tax residency, because you can do it by simply owning property there. And then she sent her money to the Bahamas via a series of tax-free banking jurisdictions in the Caribbean, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, et cetera. And so as a tax resident of the Bahamas, and with her money flowing from Luxembourg, she's going to be very, very lightly taxed on her income.

This is good, sophisticated international planning, drops her tax rates from probably I would say 99%, but yeah, I don't know, 60%, 50%, whatever the Spanish tax rate would be, drops it down to call it 2% in Luxembourg, and follows all the laws. Now the problem is she has to make sure that she doesn't become a tax resident of another country.

And so in her case, she started to spend significant amounts of time in Barcelona, and thus violated the Spanish 183-day rule, thus incurring Spanish taxation on her income. Now how did the Spanish government know that Shakira was in Barcelona? Well, obviously, because she's Shakira. Everybody knows she's in Barcelona.

She's a star. She's very well known. And so if you know that someone who is visible and making enormous amounts of money is living in your country, and is staying there, and you can see from the tabloids every day that she's still here, then you know you've got an absolute ironclad case to tax her income.

And that's ultimately what the Spanish government did, and they ultimately got her. And she settled it, paid the tax bill, et cetera. Did you know that when it comes to skin care, your local climate is of utmost importance? Discover Pour Moi, the ultimate in climate-smart products for your skin.

Made in Lyon, France, Pour Moi's exclusive fragrance-free vegan formula is designed to achieve noticeable results by adjusting your skin care to your local climate and seasons. Plus, it's SPF-free, cruelty-free, and made for all skin types. Your skin needs strategic care throughout the different seasons. That's why Pour Moi's science-backed three-step system allows you to adjust to daily conditions by rotating weather-specific day creams, keeping your skin at its best.

Right now, Pour Moi is offering 40% off and a 100% money-back guarantee. Go to PourMoisSkincare.com now and use discount code LA79 for 40% off. Buy direct and save on luxurious skin care. That's P-O-U-R-M-O-I-Skincare.com. Discount code LA79. Science advises to choose skin care by your local climate. Now why did that happen?

Well, first, it happened because she ignored the advice of her team of professional financial planners. This is frequently what happens. A wealthy person or a celebrity, et cetera, will hire a team of professionals to design some useful plan for them. The professionals will design a beautiful, perfectly executed plan, and then the celebrity or wealthy person will go on and ignore the details of the plan because they just can't be bothered.

In this case, undoubtedly, that's what Shakira did. Her tax advisors gave her good advice. She proceeded to ignore them and said, "Why can't I be in Barcelona? After all, the man I love is in Barcelona. That's where I want to be." Now, I have not read court documents and things like that, but all she had to do was not be in Spain that much.

She could go be there some. She could come in as a tourist. All she had to do was not be there all the time, but that was too hard for her, and of course, she's paid the price. She could have spent significant amounts of time in Spain. She could have then spent significant amounts of time in Portugal.

She could have spent significant amounts of time in England and any other place that she wanted to be. She could have flown her family in and out, but because she refused to do what the plan said, she became a Spanish tax resident and ultimately paid the price. But I guarantee you today that there are hundreds, probably thousands and thousands of people living in Spain who are violating the exact same Spanish law and who don't come to the attention of the Spanish government.

And again, don't violate the law. Keep track of where you are and don't become a tax resident of Spain unless that's part of the actual plan. But the point is that lots of people get away with it because they're not so obvious. Their income is not obviously connected to their lifestyle.

Their income is not obviously connected to them. And so be careful of taxes. It's much better for you, if at all possible, for you to make a lot of money and not have that money directly connected to you than it is for it to be directly connected to your face, your name, etc.

Follow all the laws, but you can follow all the laws and put in place certain privacy measures that will help you significantly. Let's move on to lifestyle because I think this is, in many ways, probably a bigger one. When people know that you make a lot of money, they expect you to live a certain lifestyle.

And those expectations upon you really are significant. After all, you're not a loser and you don't want to live like a loser. And so when you make a lot of money, you feel the need to clothe yourself in the external trappings of success. And it feels weird to you if you don't do that.

After all, you know, I could do it and that starts to become a part of who you are. And there's no limit to the amount of lifestyle expenses that are available to someone. There is no fortune so large that it can't be very quickly wasted by a dedicated spender.

We have evidence galore of this from the world of celebrity athletes, celebrity performers, etc. You can build a lifestyle to destroy any, any pot of money, no matter how large. It's always possible to do that. The problem is when you feel pressured into certain lifestyle decisions, it can often take away your peace.

And it's much better for you to have the choice to engage in a certain kind of lifestyle because you want to do that than it is for you to feel pressured to maintain a lifestyle because of external pressure. Let me give you a practical example. Let's assume that there are two options between you.

Option one is that you are a brilliant internet business guy, you're a brilliant coder, and you have succeeded in creating a very profitable business. You're earning $10 million a year. Let's say you're living in Miami, Florida, you're earning $10 million a year and, you know, things are great. But your business is entirely opaque to everyone around you.

Everyone around you knows that you work online, that you have some kind of business, but they don't know what you're doing and you kind of purposely live rather modestly. Yeah, you have a reasonable condo and you're not broke, obviously, but you don't talk about how much money you make, you don't splash money around, etc.

One of the things that your handsome income allows you to do is to take care of your family and your friends in various ways. So for example, let's say that your parents are living in Brazil because you're a Brazilian immigrant, and you're able to support them because they're your parents, you love them very much, and so you arrange and you say, "Mom, Dad, you know, I really want you guys to – I want to retire you, I want you to take it easy," and let's say that you send them something on the equivalent of $3,000 a month, and that plus their other assets and their paid-off home, etc., gives them a very comfortable lifestyle in Brazil.

And let's say that your sister is living in New York and you want to send her some money from time to time to help her with school expenses for the children, and so once a year you write a check to some private schools for $20,000, and she's enormously grateful because it allows your nieces and nephews to be enrolled in a school.

So imagine how happy everyone around is, and you yourself are happy because you're making plenty of money, you're saving plenty of money, everyone's doing well, and you're able to help those that you love and care about. Now flip that around. Let's assume that instead of being an Internet programmer and a web entrepreneur, etc., who no one has any idea what he's doing when he's sitting there staring at his laptop, instead of that you're a famous sports star, you're a football star for the Miami Dolphins, and you earn $10 million a year playing for the Miami Dolphins.

Well now, everyone knows how much money you make. So imagine your parents sitting down in Brazil calculating, "Wait a second. My son earns $10 million per year, and he's sending me $3,000 per month annualized. That's $36,000 a year. My son thinks that his parents are worth only 0.36% of his income?" Now that incredible gift that they had before that made them feel wonderful about how our son is supporting us and what a blessing to be retired by our own son, now it feels ridiculous because it's 0.36% of his income.

And the same thing happens with your sister. Your sister previously was happy with the $20,000 a year that you were paying for school, and now she's sitting there saying, "He earns $10 million a year, and all he can spare is $20,000? That's chump change." It changes everything. And this just ripples out through your life.

Let's say that you were the internet entrepreneur before, and you went out to dinner with your friends, and you just casually pick up the check and pay for a nice dinner out with your friends. I don't know, $1,000, whatever it is. And ordinarily, your friends are very grateful. "Man, what a great blessing!" And you just say, "Yeah, you know, it was an okay month.

We did fine this month. You know, my pleasure. Happy to do it." But now, if they know you make $10 million a year because you're a public sports star and your salary is in all of the newspapers, well, now people look at it and say, "$1,000? Oh, it's nothing.

He can afford it. After all, he makes $10 million a year." And this just ripples on and on and on through your life, and it's a never-ending process. That's where the dollars before were received with gratitude by people you gave them to and people you helped out with, et cetera.

Now, just for virtue of being your friend, people are prone to discount the value of the money that you're spending and supporting them with, even though the dollars are all the same. So lifestyle is always something that affects you, and I don't want to go too deep on it.

I don't want to belabor the point, but I do want to just to say, like, this just goes everywhere. It goes everywhere in your life. If people think you have money and you come in and you start driving a hard bargain on a car or something that you're buying or something silly, then there's just so much conflict.

It's much better to be perceived as not being particularly wealthy with regard to lifestyle stuff. Another huge one is requests for aid, requests for help, requests for charity. If people think that you have money, and especially if they know that you have money, then they feel very entitled to continually ask you for money, and that can be very, very difficult because while undoubtedly you want to help people, you want to actually help people.

And sometimes giving money is a good way to help people, and sometimes giving money is the best way to hurt people, and yet they often don't understand that. They often don't have any clue. They often don't know that that's the case. And so even if you choose to help or choose to hurt, not only do you face the same thing about, "Well, I only asked him for $10,000, and after all, he makes $10 million a year and $10,000 is nothing." Even if that's the case, then it continues on, and when you say no, they see it as the money instead of being open to other things.

So it's a very difficult, difficult scenario. Now there are many other areas in which things come along the way. Lack of privacy costs you money. There's security risks. I think Mark Zuckerberg pays something like $40 million – or Facebook pays something like $40 million a year for Mark Zuckerberg's private security.

So you have security risks. There's kidnapping risks for your children. You have to live in a certain neighborhood. It used to be that maybe some neighborhoods were safe enough you could live. Now you got to be in a gated neighborhood. You have to have security, et cetera. So your whole lifestyle just goes up if people know that you have money because you are now a public target.

And publicity just attracts crazies, just going to bed every night wondering who's going to show up at your front door tomorrow because some crazy thing happened is an ongoing risk. There are many, many costs associated with that lack of privacy, and so you should be very, very careful. Now let's flip it around.

Are there benefits to publicity? I think without question for some people there are, but you should probably be careful to consider those benefits before you seek it. There are various levels of publicity. Many people are attracted to the idea of being famous. I think that's undeniable. We live in a world in which so many people want to be famous.

They want to go viral. They want to be well-known. I don't understand this myself. I don't understand it intellectually, and I don't understand it emotionally. It's not something that I have. I hate it. I hate the tiny little bit of fame that I have because of the fact that you're listening to me right now.

I despise it with a passion. I don't like being recognized. I don't want to be known. I don't want to be famous. So for whatever reason, if it's genetic or circumstantial, I have never aspired to being well-known. I've sabotaged many things that I've done because, "Uh-oh, I might all of a sudden become famous." It's very hard to run an internet business that makes a lot of money when you've sabotaged a lot of things because all of a sudden you're going to become famous.

I don't recommend that. But I acknowledge that's something that many people want, and so your mileage may vary. I can see some of the benefits of fame for some people. So first of all, I can clearly see the benefits of fame if it's going to make you money, and there is no question that you can cash in on fame, on your personal brand, even on notoriety, and it can make you money.

My rule on things like social media is this. If you're making money on social media, you should use social media. If you're not making money on social media, you shouldn't use it. There's just no benefit to social media, an enormous amount of harm unless you're making money. You can apply the same thing.

There are a lot of people who make a lot of money because of their fame, and there are many, many careers that are only possible because of the fame. Would you switch places with Shakira or Ricky Martin or Enrique Iglesias or Juanes or whatever? I think most of us pretty quickly would because we say, "Well, if I can have the fame and I can have something that I like, clearly I like singing or I like dancing, and I can do the thing that I'm good at, then I'm willing to do that in exchange for the money." As I see it, public money is definitely better than no money, but of course private money is much better than public money.

If public money is your only pathway to money, then it's probably worth pursuing. In many cases, many careers I'll talk about in a moment, there's really no way around it. There's no way to hide your income. If you're a Fortune 500 C-suite executive and your income amount and your stock options is published in every single annual report, there's no way to really hide your money.

If you are a surgeon and everyone knows that you're a specialized surgeon or anesthesiologist or some other medical specialty, and obviously you make hundreds and hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars per year, there's no real way to hide it. I'm going to talk about some strategies for that in a moment.

What you should do is you should be thoughtful about it and you should be clear about what you want. I think that if you don't have the instinct to want fame, you should be cautious about acquiring it. I was going to wait, but let me stick it in here.

What's the flip side of fame? The flip side of fame is influence, influence. If you care about something and you care about making change in the world, then the flip side of fame is influence. Fame has a connotation of basically being a self-serving, egotistical thing. Influence has a different connotation for us in the English language where it's something that can be used for good or for evil.

It's power. There's no question that fame equals influence equals power. While I don't love the tiny bit of fame and whatnot that I have, what I do love is I do love the influence. When I get emails from listeners, as I frequently do, when I hear that something I've said has been able to help someone positively, when I hear that someone has embraced an idea that I've thought long and hard about and I think is helpful to them, then it fills me with pride and joy because I believe that that influence allows me to make the world a better place.

That influence allows me to accomplish some of my personal goals, to bend the arc of history a tiny amount in whatever area I can influence. If fame is the cost of influence, then in many cases, it's a cost worth paying. It's a cost worth bearing. It's a cost worth dealing with because of the opportunity to help someone, to serve someone effectively, etc.

That's the flip side of fame, is influence. And it's well worth having, but it shouldn't be entered into naively, and fame is not the only way to acquire influence. Some of the most influential people wield their influence in an entirely invisible manner. And to me, that's the ultimate power.

I don't know how to get there because of the life choices that I made. Maybe someday I will. And I think that if you could have it all, what would you have? You would have money, and the money would be created in a way that was not connected to you.

Then you would develop influence based upon your character of those who know you, your ideas and the power of them, and the money that you have behind it, and you would wield that influence in very lightly seen, hopefully even invisible ways. And the only people that really understood the true nature of your influence would be those who were undeniably close to you and could see your character.

And then that would be very rewarding. So in my mind, that's the ultimate thing to have. It's just very hard to know how to get there because fame and notoriety, etc., can be a pathway to money, money can be a pathway to influence, etc. So it can be a very confusing muddle to try to work your way through when you're dealing with this in a normal fashion, trying to figure out what business do I start.

And the reason I'm making this show today is because this is something that very few people think about when they're starting a business. They don't think about it when they're creating their entities. They don't think about it when they're putting their face on things or their name on things.

And in many cases, you can build things without your face and name on them, and you should consider if you would rather have that than something with your face and name on it. In summary, public money is better than no money, but private money is much better than public money.

Private money preserves your options, it allows you to come and go as you like with minimal risk, it keeps your costs down. Unless it's making you money or developing influence for you, I don't think you ever win when flaunting your wealth. And so it's much better for you to keep yourself modest if at all possible.

And by the way, this is one of the reasons that I am suspicious of anybody who leads with lifestyle. There's a balance here, but I've spent so many years reviewing financial statements to know that half the people that live a very flashy lifestyle can afford it, and their flashy lifestyle is evidence of the fact that they have plenty of money.

And half the people that live a flashy lifestyle can't afford it, and their flashy lifestyle is based upon fakery and lies. It's an elaborate scheme, it's bait to try to lure you in, you're the sucker. So especially in the financial space, when I see people living a flashy lifestyle, and here it's especially bad when it's an extreme lifestyle, I don't know, Dan Bilzerian or something like that, living in an enormous house, I just assume that it's all a giant con game, and I'm the sucker that they're trying to get, and I just start with that assumption.

And I guess thankfully I grew up near Palm Beach, and basically every Palm Beach bazillionaire that I ever interacted with, there was no question that they had money. After all, you're sitting in a $45 million mansion on the water, and there's no question that they have money, and there's no financing on it, etc.

But every genuinely wealthy Palm Beacher that I interacted with always had some more modest expression of wealth. And it's not to say they didn't buy fancy stuff, of course they did, there's plenty of yachts and plenty of things, but there's just a modesty of expression that for me has always been, continues to be connected with those who are genuinely wealthy in a way that some wacko on the internet doesn't – the guy on the internet who's showing off the flashy stuff doesn't express himself in that confident way that all of the genuinely bazillionaire people that I've ever interacted with do.

And so it's not as simple – millionaires don't drive Toyota Corollas, it's not the millionaire next door kind of vibe, it's that there's a general modesty about life that matters. And I meant to cover one more thing about attracting genuinely good people into your life with expressions of wealth, but I'll do that in this context.

I want to pivot to this idea. What if you can't hide it? After all, it's all well and good that if somebody wants to make $10 million from his laptop as I've always aspired to, but it's another thing if it's possible. Again, you work your way up in a company and your salary is known or you work in a specialty where people know that you make money, it's just unavoidable.

Well, here I think your basic strategy, if at all possible, is just always lie about your money, always lie down and make comments about, "Eh, things aren't as great as they seem." And again, there's a difference between somebody who is perceived to make money and somebody who we know exactly how much they make.

Let's use an example. Let's say that you're a physician. There are a lot of physicians who make $2 million a year, $3 million a year just from their medical work, say nothing of other businesses. And there are a lot of physicians who make $200,000 a year, $300,000 a year, etc.

And so I was working with a client recently and I gave this exact advice. She was a very successful physician. She was earning, I think, something like $3 million. And I pat myself on the back, some of it through some of the advice I'd given her where she'd gone from making a few hundred thousand dollars a year to a few million dollars a year.

And it was her work, but I was happy to see her progress over the years when I most recently spoke to her. And the point was, I said to her, I said, "Just cause the impression to be that you make $300,000 a year instead of $3 million a year." Because people can't distinguish and differentiate between those things.

It would be ridiculous for you as a physician to somehow try to represent that you make $30,000 a year. We all know that's not true. But it's not ridiculous for you to represent that you make $300,000 a year in basically the way that you talk, the things that you do, etc.

as compared to $3 million a year. The day you say to your friends that aren't in your social class or your economic class, which is common, the day that you say to them that you make $3 million a year is the day that they stop appreciating every time you buy dinner, every time you fund a fancy event, every time you get the hotel and front row seats for a great concert, etc.

Now they just start to expect it. Instead of looking at you and just being grateful that you were able to do that for them, now they look at it and say, "Oh, it was no big deal for her. Of course she could do that." On the flip side, if someone thinks that you make $300,000 a year, they understand you're not broke, obviously, but they still appreciate it when you pick up the tab for dinner.

They still appreciate it when you organize a $5,000 weekend or things like that, because they don't understand what a small percentage of your net worth it is. It doesn't change their perception like it would if they did know how much money you make. People don't know what it's like to make $200,000 a month.

They have no clue. Because they have no clue, it's better to keep that quiet and only share that with trusted advisors. Again, this is not always possible. There are two ways to go about it. Number one is just in your actions and in your behavior and in your comportment, whatever you do, the things that you buy, et cetera, you can live a great lifestyle that is appropriate to you, but don't be so splashy as to cause people to think that your earning capacity is genuinely what it is.

That's the first thing. The second thing is if you're willing to, you can just make comments about your poor management of money. I think that's a reasonable strategy. If somebody thinks that you make tons of money and they know it, let's say again your very high income is reported on a financial statement, a publicly disclosed financial statement for anybody who wants to know and say it, then you can whine about your expenses just as much as anybody else does.

There are good reasons to do that. I don't love the idea of dishonesty of that, but there are good reasons to not make it seem like you're worth tons of money. Remember that especially when I've talked about asset protection planning, et cetera, the first strategy with asset protection planning is just not to be a target.

People with heavily laden pockets are generally going to be targeted in a way that people with very light pockets are not. Maybe your salary itself is quite ample, but you develop some side business and your side business sucks up all your money or you spend all your money on your horse racing business or you send all your money on your wife's charitable organization and it sucks all the money out, et cetera.

If you want to use that as a form of impression, I get a little uncomfortable with this. That's why it's always better to avoid it just because I don't like any hint of dishonesty, but I think that that's an appropriate strategy to employ at times is some complaints about how much money this charity sucks up from us or how much money this business.

We had a terrible year. We lost money, et cetera. You are in control of some of those things and it's worth your employing those strategies on occasion. Now, earlier, I neglected to talk about some of the other social benefits because – and I meant to. It was my mistake.

When I think about fame, fame and notoriety, and I talked about influence, that influence can be on a broad scale, but it can also be on a personal scale. What I mean is if you're a heavyweight person, that is valuable. Being perceived as a heavyweight person, a serious man or woman is important and is valuable.

The word I'm using, heavyweight or serious, is intentionally more than money. You're not a serious person just because you have money, but money is a component of it. And so if you desire to make a difference in the world, if you desire to have influence and impact, you want to cultivate an air, a reality that is also going to have an air of being a serious person, somebody who is intentional.

Part of that has to do with the quality of the ideas that you consider, the quality of your personal philosophy, the intelligence of the way that you speak, the way that you act, the wisdom that you have to share, etc. But then it also wants to be backed up with money.

And so I think the best path is if you genuinely are just simply concerned about something that is important and you're not just making small lies and misdirection about how your charitable endeavor and your family foundation is sucking up all your money. But in reality, it's genuinely true. Not that it's sucking up all your money, but that you are involved in something serious and something that's important.

For the ones who get it done, the most important part is the one you need now. And the best partner is the one who can deliver. That's why millions of maintenance and repair pros trust Grainger, because we have professional grade supplies for every industry, even hard to find products.

And we have same day pickup and next day delivery on most orders. But most importantly, we have an unwavering commitment to help keep you up and running. Call, clickgrainger.com or just stop by. Grainger for the ones who get it done. To me, that's the ethically superior way where you genuinely are concerned with things and you genuinely are investing in things that matter to you.

And the exact numbers never need to be said, but you get all of the benefits of money, of being known that you have money because you're a serious player in the area that you're involved in. You get all the lifestyle benefits of money because it's not hidden, but you also get all the benefits of being a serious person and you're just not being frivolous.

That you are making a change in something, you're focusing on something, you're trying to send a man to Mars or you're trying to solve homelessness in your area, et cetera. And to me, that's the best solution is to be in that space and in that space where you're a serious person and you're making a serious change.

It's not the number of zeros on your income or the number of zeros on your wealth that truly matter. It's the seriousness of your ideas and the money is not optional, but there's a broad degree of acceptability in the money that matters. And this is a strategy that you can employ if you have public money and this is a strategy that you can employ if you have private money.

It doesn't matter. What matters is the size of the impact that you're making. What matters is the size of the contribution you're giving to the area that you care about. And this will in many ways be your ticket out of the frivolous consumption club and into the exclusive club of heavy hitters who are doing something.

And this is where I want to close. What people who have not built wealth I think often don't understand is that it's necessary for wealthy people to basically exclusively surround themselves with wealthy people in order for them to function. And so all of the accoutrements of wealth, the private exclusive neighborhoods, the high price tags to be in those exclusive neighborhoods, the private clubs with very high entrance fees, the exclusive schools, et cetera, these are all part of the screening mechanism that allows wealthy people to be comfortable, to be comfortable because they're surrounded by people who understand.

And again, it goes back to that difference of buying a $1,000 dinner for your friends versus not. If you're at the Everglades Club on Palm Beach, nobody is worrying about the $1,000 dinner or the non-$1,000 dinner. And everybody understands that we're all here at this table because we've done the hard work and we know what it's like to be at this table.

We've all been in that situation where we had the experience where we picked up the $1,000 tab for other people and they either really appreciated it or they didn't appreciate it and they thought, "How ridiculous. After all, my son makes $10 million a year. How can he only find it in his heart to send me $36,000 a year?" Those shared experiences are some part of what it means to become wealthy.

And people who have had those experiences often want to be with people who understand. Now, I'm not a member of the Everglades Club and I wouldn't tell you if I were, but I just think of an example I would share. Back when I was an insurance agent, one of my friends said to me, "You know, I really only go on vacation with other insurance agents because we're about the only ones who can take a week off randomly here and there on the spur of the moment and go skiing because the snow is good and let's go and fly across the country and go skiing." And there's just a lifestyle comfort level that I have to be with people that understand that I have the ability and my schedule to do what I want to do when I want to do it and I have the money to pay for it.

And it's a modest amount of money that you need to do that, but it's more of a lifestyle. And that's, I think, what many people are looking for is they're looking for a sense of comfort with lifestyle, to be with people who understand, to be with people who are not going to put awkward pressure on you, to be with people who understand the crazies that are attracted with publicity and fame, etc., to be with people who understand.

And so I hope I've articulated that in some effective way, that there is a genuine difference of lifestyle that wealthy people have lived versus non-wealthy people. And it's those experiences that make it very important for wealthy people to largely just surround themselves with their peers. And that's not something that you're going to fake.

That's not something that you are going to hide. There's no one faking his way into the Everglades Club. And those kind of elite institutions are designed in such a way to eliminate the fakery. The Internet is not going to eliminate the fakery. The Internet is going to promote the fakery.

But the elite institutions do eliminate the fakery. And they are all oriented towards exclusivity, privacy, modesty, etc. That's why those institutions exist. So in summary, think carefully about the things that are important to you when earning your income. Think carefully about how you earn it, work that you enjoy, etc., and recognize that you have some influence and choice in these affairs.

Ten years from now, you can be in a different space depending on where you are and how you're there. Think carefully about earning your income in a public manner and recognize that there are costs associated with that and there are costs associated with your decisions. I don't think that one is right and one is wrong.

Years ago when I was young, I just was always attracted to the private money approach. And then here I am with a podcast violating my own principles. But it always seemed to me the superior option. And just the kind of the hassle that I was with a friend of mine a few weeks ago who is a very accomplished surgeon and he was lamenting about how he gets multiple calls every week of financial advisors going after him, etc.

And it's like, that's a price that I don't pay, but he pays. And just being silly, but it's real. Those things are real. And so be careful and be thoughtful about how you generate your money. If you can generate your money that's not connected to you, I think that's the way to go.

But it can be hard to do it. So public money is better than no money, but private money is infinitely better than public money. Keep that in mind as you earn your income. Keep that in mind as you spend your money. Keep that in mind as you talk about your money and recognize that two people can keep a secret when one of them is dead.

So be very cautious. You're often the one who creates your own successes and failures based upon the words that come out of your mouth. Thank you for listening. I hope this has been useful to you. I'll be back with you very soon.