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Feel good about being fashionably late. It's the last chance to join Planet Fitness for just $0.24 down, $10 a month. Cancel anytime. Hurry, deal ends January 31st. See home club for details. - 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 Josh Rasheeds. I'm your host. Today, I want to give you one simple encouragement, and that is this. Surround yourself with the things that you want more of in your life. Surround yourself intentionally with the things that you want more of in your life. Or said differently, intentionally surround yourself with more of the things that you want in your life.

I'm not sure how else to say it, but I want to expand it for you and give you some ideas. But first, a simple story. I'm broadcasting to you today from Panama City, Panama. I'm here with Gabriel Custodiate and Mikel Thorup and a bunch of my listeners, and we're doing our Panama Investment Tour.

And yesterday, we spent a good amount of the day touring real estate. We had some morning sessions, some educational sessions, and then we went to kind of a mid-upscale luxury tower that was newly built and checked out some of the things there. Then we went and visited kind of a mid-rise building that was going to be primarily designated for kind of young people housing, student housing, things like that, kind of entry-level stuff.

And then we finished our evening at a very private, exclusive community that is being developed just off the coast of Panama. It's got a very interesting story. It's a set of man-made islands. It's called Ocean Reef Islands. And evidently, it's an interesting story because they are created islands, kind of like I think most people would know about the palms in Dubai, some of the man-made island developments that have been built in Dubai.

Well, these are kind of like that, but it's a rather exclusive opportunity because no one can build islands like these anymore. The way that these islands came about is that a contractor built a highway through Panama City for the Panamanians. And as I understand the story, the Panamanian government didn't have all of the money that they had pledged to pay the contractor.

And so they paid part of it with money, and they paid the other part of the bill with rights, with property rights. And so they granted a small selection of property rights, of basically development rights to the sea right off the coast of Panama City, right in front of the city.

Well, that contractor later sold it to a developer who we met last night. And this developer has built these two man-made islands and they are developing the real estate on it. But these islands are very exclusive because some time back, the Panamanian court found it unconstitutional to do things like build man-made islands in the sea because the sea is part of the patrimony of all people.

It's the heritage, it's the collective heritage of all the people. And so it would be unjust and unconstitutional to give it away to individuals to develop it. So in essence, this development is one of a kind, and as such, it's quite an exclusive development, have lots of beautiful houses there, et cetera.

But as I was there last night, touring some of the apartments that are there for sale and some of the houses and thinking about it, I was quite shocked at how inspired I was simply by being there on the island, being there in the beautiful condo, being there in the beautiful apartment, being in the beautiful houses.

And as we finished the evening, having dinner on the terrace overlooking the marina, and just surrounded by beauty and wealth, and there's the gorgeous skyline of Panama City at the distance, and the evening turns cool when the sun goes down. It's just a very inspiring experience. And I realized that this is something that I myself have neglected significantly over the last couple of years.

I didn't always neglect it. I used to give great attention to this. So for example, practical application. I enjoy being surrounded by wealth, being surrounded by luxury, et cetera. And so one of the things that I have frequently had a habit of doing for many, many years is always to go and quarterly do something like take myself to a nice lunch at a nice five-star hotel often, and sit out on the balcony and think about my plans for the quarter, and build my goals and build my dreams.

Et cetera. Things like that. I've been very fortunate to grow up in an environment in which I've had lots of wealthy friends and wealthy people around me, and I've lived just a privileged existence. I've done some of the coolest things, been around money, been with very wealthy people, et cetera.

And so that was just part of my life in some ways automatically, even though the money wasn't mine, it was just around me. And I realized last night that this is something that I have unconsciously neglected for the last few years. I have not been doing this. And it's understandable why I haven't been doing this.

It's understandable. I've been having babies and staying close to home and working and homeschooling, et cetera. But I realized, Joshua, what are you doing? You've neglected the basics. You've neglected to give yourself inspiration. You've neglected to give yourself a vision. You got your head down, you're working, working, working, but you don't know what you're working towards.

And if you'd asked me that the day before yesterday, I would have said, well, maybe, but I wouldn't have realized it. But having that emotional experience made me realize it. And as I was reflecting on it throughout the day-to-day and last evening, I realized that this is something, again, that I've neglected, that I need to change.

I need to pick up my old habits, and more importantly than picking them up, I need to reinforce them. And this is something that I thought would be helpful for you, 'cause perhaps you yourself have neglected to surround yourself with more of the things that you want in life.

Now, money, wealth, luxury, certainly those things are inspirational. I think we should pay attention to this because we can measure these things. I wonder if there's an academic out there who has tried to figure out how much of the growth of wealth, how much of the fact that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, how much of that could be attributed to environment?

I've never read any research on that, but I'd be fascinated to know if anyone has tried to do that because although there's clearly a behavioral function of this, meaning that wealthy people become wealthy because they do the kinds of things that wealthy people do, the precursor to behavior is influence.

It's environment. And I was considering, I did see recently something of a write-up or a paper or something where an academic or some kind of analyst had proposed and said that obesity should be treated exactly in the same way that a contagious disease is treated, as an epidemic, because obesity truly is contagious.

And I didn't immerse myself in the details enough to articulate it to you, but the basic argument was that if you track obesity, fat people, if you track fatness, it's connected, it's correlated, it's connected, and it's, and this person was making the argument, that it's causally connected. It's not correlated.

It's causally connected to being surrounded by other fat people, and I realized, isn't that true? I know for me, if I'm hanging out with my fat friends and we go out to dinner, then it's very easy and easy for me to order fattening, unhealthy foods, because that's normal, whereas if I go out with a bunch of health-conscious people who are very thin and athletic, et cetera, I don't wanna be the guy that's ordering fat person food.

That's just, how come I'm not gonna do it? And so that influence spreads itself, and you see that in terms of exercise. Healthy, athletic people are more likely to suggest healthy ways of passing time together. They're not gonna say, let's come over and, I don't know, binge watch TV and pizza.

They'll say, let's go for a walk. Let's go play a game. Let's go to the park. Let's go skiing. Let's go hiking. Let's go do something athletic, and what's interesting to me is I realized that that research-based statistical analysis is something that we should apply to other areas of life, and I could imagine this being true.

I could imagine a researcher 10 or 20 years from now, if it hasn't been done already, and I'm just ignorant of it, showing how so many of the individual decisions that cause somebody to be wealthy are based on an infectious form of behavior. You see one of your friends buying a house instead of renting, and you say, well, why couldn't I?

Why not me? And you go and buy a house instead of renting, and that single decision alone accounts for an enormous amount of the growth of wealth that other people do, that people experience. You see one of your friends going and getting a better job, and sometimes your friend will say to you, well, why don't you go get a better job, and you never thought about it before.

You realize, why don't I go get a better job? One of your friends starts a business or someone you know starts a business, and you recognize, hey, I could do that, too, and sometimes a business wins. And people who grow up in that environment, who grow up surrounded by success, who grow up surrounded by people who make those kinds of decisions, they naturally think that it's normal to do that, and that expression of normality is so powerful.

I wish that I had lots of other examples to point to, but the one that just is so striking to me is the one that I have said about fat people versus non-fat people and unhealthy people versus healthy people. I think you see this if you listen to people who are from a place that is very image-conscious, maybe Miami, Florida, or Los Angeles, California, or something like that, and what you find when you hang out with people from those areas is they're very, very conscious of everything related to image, and so they're very health-conscious, they're very focused on how they eat, they're very prone to athletic endeavors, and the lifestyle around them grows up because of their interest in those things, and there are more healthy options available.

And you look around at the people, and you see fat people, you see unhealthy people, but on the whole, the people have beautiful bodies, they have beautiful skin, they dress beautifully, et cetera, this external expressions that we have of health, and it seems like it's contagious. Then if you go somewhere else, I've watched several YouTube videos where people will travel to the fattest city in America, and genuinely, just good-hearted, genuinely caring people, they go to the fattest city in America, and they talk to people.

And even some of the residents of that city talk about how hard it is for them to be in that environment, and to not be unhealthy, not be fat, and it's very much an environmental thing. And you can see this, right? You may have somebody that comes from one of those places and moves to, again, beautiful city, beautiful people city, wherever that happens to be, and pretty soon, they're dressing differently, their habits start to rub off on them, et cetera.

So this is something, again, I wish I had a better, multiple examples to give, but I think this connects enough. I think most people would acknowledge that what I'm saying has truth. And you can see that causal connection that the researcher was recently referring to. And this turning to money and business, this is one of the reasons why the big mega cities are likely to only get bigger, because when somebody goes into that environment, so when somebody goes to New York City and lives in New York City, and they start to be surrounded by the hustle, and the bustle, and the opportunity, and the enthusiasm that pervades and permeates the city like that, it's hard not to be affected by it.

It's hard not to be infected by it. It affects you. I notice this every time I spend time in the United States is that when I'm in the United States, the culture of achievement, the culture of hard work, the work ethic, et cetera, starts to rub off on me.

I start to feel more and more competitive, and I wanna strive, I wanna compete, et cetera. But when I go to a place that has a slower pace of life and has a more laid back culture, et cetera, I just, eh, there's no need to do it, and I start to just be more content and more complacent, et cetera.

Now, it's certainly advisable to take a good, hard, honest look at what you want more of in your life. And if you don't want more money in your life, but you want more relaxation, then perhaps you should relocate to a place where that is the key. But the point I wanna drive home today in a very simple way is you can make conscious decisions to surround yourself with more of what you want in life.

And you can do that in a variety of ways. A very actionable way that you can do that is by surrounding yourself virtually with what you want more of in your life. Remember that every influence that you invite into your life is going to influence you. And so all of us need to do a careful audit of the types of things that we allow into our homes, into our eyeballs, into our ear balls, and into our minds.

We need to be very careful of the things that we allow in. And unfortunately, there's such a tendency that we all have to be rather aimless about what we consume, because it just sneaks its way in. And usually it's an algorithm just kind of serving things up to us.

And so as I realized this truth last night, I said, I need to take another good hard look at my algorithms. Are they serving me with what I want? Or have they been trained to give me what I don't want? I want to be surrounded by the virtue, the righteousness, the success, the freedom, the wealth, the good living.

I want to be surrounded by the good, the beautiful, the positive, et cetera, in my life. I don't want to be surrounded by negativity and sarcasm and cynicism and poor little old me-ism and I can't do it and the world is falling. I don't want to be surrounded with that stuff.

I'm gonna, I don't want it. And so I'm going to very intentionally take a look at all of my virtual environments and consider what can I prune, what do I want more of? Am I surrounding myself with the things that I want? Now we can extend virtuality or virtual environment to things that aren't digital technology.

And I've always loved magazines for this reason. Traveling the world, my magazine consumption is much less, but I really love magazines for this reason. And I think even in 2024, there's still something special about having some magazines that flow into your life on a monthly basis that remind you of what you want.

For example, this is goofy and I don't, kind of personal, but there's a magazine, I think they're still published, I subscribe to for years, called Coastal Living. And it was just this wonderful, simple magazine about seaside homes and the feelings that came with them. And I always loved that magazine 'cause it inspired me and it's the kind of aesthetic that I like and that I enjoy being around, et cetera.

So think about what kinds of magazines could you surround yourself with? It's inspiring to have a magazine that feeds you fresh new images for yourself. And I haven't done this in years. I regret not doing it more, but for years I used to keep a lookbook, a physical lookbook, and I would take the magazines and I would cut out anything that I found inspirational from those magazines and I would paste, literally, the pictures into a notebook.

I would just get cheap composition books. And I used to love going through those notebooks because they filled my mind with images that I wanted, that I wanted to see more of, and they were inspirational. And I would think, what can I do to have more of this in my life?

You can make your images in any way that you want and you can make any kind of associations with anything that you want. So you make your own associations and don't be bashful about the things that you want in your life. One other application of that, today I do this more with digital tools.

I don't think they're as effective, but I keep a folder full of images that inspire me. Whenever I see something online that inspires me in whatever way, I screenshot it and I add it to my inspiration folder. And so it's kind of like a digital lookbook. Recently I've been creating images for my children.

And what I'll do is I'll take a virtue. We practice a lot of virtue in character study. And so I have gotten pretty good with using Dolly through Chat GPT. I've gotten pretty good at training Dolly to give me the kinds of things that I want. So what I do for my children is I take a picture of, I create an image using the AI art generation system, and I age them a little bit.

So I show them, say, seven, eight, 10 years down the road. And then I use that avatar that I've created that looks sort of like what they might look like in seven, eight, 10 years. And then I put that avatar in a situation where, say, the person is demonstrating determination or courage or honesty or empathy or whatever the character quality is.

And I've been making a book of these for my children, individualized for each of the children. I'm not done with the project, but I'm gonna finish it. And I have that printed 'cause they love to look at it. My wife makes yearbooks for each of the children. So every year, we create a standalone printed photo book of the experience that the child has.

And my children love to go through those. They love to look at their pictures, and that really helps cement the memories of all the things that we did together and all the good times and the places we went and the things that we did, et cetera. And I see this as an application of that.

Here's where we're going. And I try to put those things that are good and beautiful and inspiring into the images and check back in five or 10 years. But if someone had done that for me when I was a child, I would have loved that 'cause I want my children to have something to go into.

And I've been doing pictures for myself as well, but I haven't followed all the way through. And I'm newly determined to do more of that, to create those images because I do really believe that what the mind can see, what the mind can conceive and see and believe, the mind can achieve.

We are goal-achieving mechanisms. And I don't wanna let my life slip behind. I wanna be diligent to achieve those things. And then continuing on, then of course, virtual can expand outwards to the books that we read. And I've been doing pretty well with this. I've been reading a lot more biographies over the last year.

I didn't get into biographies when I was a kid. I spent years reading basically like nonfiction, self-help stuff and business books and whatnot. And I guess a few years ago, most of that stuff started to feel hollow for me. And my appetite for any of it just basically disappeared.

And I found it very hard to sit down and read a nonfiction book, especially kind of the light, fluffy self-help books. I've read a few that I think are genuinely helpful, but it seemed like something happened in me. And what I longed for was to experience what other people have experienced.

And so I've been looking for reading biographies. And I find that really connects with me. It helps me to connect with them. I'm reading a book on the Rothschilds right now. I'm fascinated by the Rothschild family. And it really inspires me and connects with me. And so we need to be careful about what we do more of, of that in our lives.

Because you can, this sounds so like weird, but really you can commune and connect and interact with the greatest men and women of history through their biographies, their autobiographies, their biographical sketches, et cetera. And that transforms your circle of influence to be those men and women that you admire and that you want to be like.

And it impacts you and it's effective. So there are many things that we can do to surround ourselves with those kinds of virtual influences, even if we don't have the physical influences that we might like to have today. The next thing that we can do is insert ourselves into the kinds of situations, into the kinds of things that we want more of in our life, even if it's on a temporary basis.

It's perfectly reasonable to go places on a temporary basis and spend time around the things that you want more of in your life. And there are many ways that you can do this. So I grew up near Palm Beach and I would routinely go over to the island and just spend time hanging out on the island because it's a beautiful place filled with beautiful people and everything is immaculate, et cetera, and it just makes you feel differently.

Back to the example I gave earlier of going to a nice hotel and sitting there and dressing up and saying, "What do I need to do to comfortably stay at this kind of hotel?" And surround yourself with those kinds of people, even if it's on a temporary basis. We can do this if you, let's say it's a character quality and you wanna be surrounded by people who are not drug dealers.

Well, go to church on Sunday morning and surround yourself with people who are churchgoers and it will impact you and change you and influence you. You can experience this if you go to a gym. You can experience this in any positive sense. You can experience this if you go to the kinds of place where business guys hang out.

It's so much better to go and work at a coworking space where you're surrounded by other people than to sit at home where it's just you. It's so much better to be connected with these people and these inspiring places, these inspiring feelings, et cetera, even if it's only on a temporary basis.

And I think that that's something that is accessible to all of us. If you want to study more and be more learned, regardless of whether you are a college student or not, go to your local college and go sit in a library and that library environment will influence you.

I don't have a longer string of examples to give you, but don't neglect the temporary influence that is available to you. And as your financial advisor, don't be scared to spend money on those temporary influences. I'll talk more about this in just a moment, but sometimes spending money to be on a trip with someone that's just a little bit outside of your normal ability, just a little bit of a stretch, that can be the thing that inspires you to action.

Now, in many cases, there are ways to make these experiences more permanent. And I want to concede quickly that I never knew in the past whether to believe in this or not. For example, my parents were not members of a country club. I would have been prone when younger in life to make fun of people who were at a country club or a member of a private club.

I would have been prone to say, "There's no point in that, come on, "why are you spending the money?" And I just didn't understand. And when people would say, "Why should I join the country club?" It usually sound like some self-serving, "Well, there's gonna be business there, right? "I'm gonna sell life insurance, "and so I gotta go to the country club "'cause that's where all the people "are gonna buy life insurance are." But one of the reasons that people wanna join private clubs or exclusive neighborhoods, et cetera, is simply that they surround themselves with more of what they want in life, and their success becomes easier.

This goes back to why does one person, why does a wealthy parent spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in some cases to send a child to an exclusive Ivy League university? People say, "Well, it's because of the network." Yeah, but it's partly the network, but in some cases, is it the network effect?

Meaning that you're basically in many cases choosing the peer group that's gonna make the kinds of decisions that may rub off on you. And is the ability to pick up the phone and call somebody who knows somebody really powerful? Yes, but perhaps it's also the fact that you're surrounded by people who know that they can pick up the phone and call people who can get stuff done, and that changes the person.

That's why I led off with the idea on obesity, is that if obesity is contagious, then thinness or athleticism, or we don't have a good opposite of obesity, like non-obesity is also contagious. And if poverty is contagious, I think we could make a good argument that it at least bears a lot of similarity to research on obesity, then wealth is also contagious.

And I could justify that. I can't prove it, but I could justify that argument with a lot of strength. And so it makes sense to spend money to put yourself into those situations permanently. And this is where penny-pinching often doesn't make sense. It makes sense to move to an expensive city.

It doesn't always make sense to just go somewhere else where it's cheaper. If the expensive city has some of the values and qualities that you want more of in your life, it makes sense to live in an exclusive neighborhood. It makes sense to surround yourself with those things because they will rub off on you and you will be more motivated to make changes.

You will be more inspired to take the kinds of actions that lead you to have more of that in your life. And this is what I wanna focus on for the final few minutes of the show. How does this relate to wealth? As far as I can tell, a great error, or a great mistake is that we think that wealth is produced by robotic people.

We think that we ourselves function as rational, robotic creatures. And yet, this isn't the case. We're highly emotional, largely irrational creatures. And by the way, obviously, there's a whole field of behavioral economics that's dedicated to studying this. I'm not an expert in that, casual observer. But in reality, we are highly irrational, emotional creatures who look for logical justifications for our impetuous actions.

We don't articulate the fact that we make most of our decisions based on emotion, passion, et cetera. We just make our decisions and then we come up, in many cases, with a logical explanation for why we did the thing that we did. But what's interesting is, that irrationality often pays off for many people.

If you think about something as irrational as starting a business, the decision to start a business, when you sit down and you look at the enormous odds against your success in any business pursuit, it would cause most people to, I think, admit that most businesses are begun for irrational reasons.

But you have a passion for the idea. You want desperately to make something of yourself. You want to be free. You wanna make a bazillion dollars, whatever it is. And you find an idea and you say, "I want this." And then you basically justify it to yourself with some kind of logical, rational argument, et cetera.

And then you go do it. But what's interesting is, the key to a lot of business success is the lengths that you and I are willing to go to to prove that our irrational emotional decision was actually the right one to do. And so we'll work like crazy to justify that this new business we started actually works.

And that extra amount of work causes us to actually have the self-fulfilling prophecy of the successful business. And this isn't perfect. It's not true all the time. But it's those 80-hour, excuse me, those 80-hour, those 80-hour weeks that get rid of all of the mistakes that we made along the way.

And on the back end, we got all the work done. And then we start justifying. We forget all the bad because we got the good. And that applies, I think, to a lot of other areas in life. You'll see this with someone, again, who'll buy a house. It is a major decision that generally works out really well for most people.

They buy a house, but they get way in over their head and they can't pay the mortgage. But then they really wanna keep the house. They wanna justify that this was the right decision. So a guy will go out and get two extra jobs and cut his budget, et cetera, make those mortgage payments, make those mortgage payments.

And then two years after the valley, he's still making them and then things are better. And then for the rest of his life, that house is a great financial decision for him. And the irrational goal of keeping the thing caused him to go and do the extra work. Or let's say that someone who gets a job making a lot of money, you're gonna go through a professional career formation that's gonna require you to go to school for 10 years and you're gonna be underpaid, et cetera, but you wanna do it.

So you go into it and you pour enormous amounts of effort into it. And you question it, is this the right thing? But you just wanna justify that you're gonna make it through and you make it through. And then on the other side, you make huge amounts of money.

And these are the kinds of decisions that ultimately lead to wealth. These irrational emotional decisions that cause someone to do the work necessary to actually achieve the outcome that they want in the fullness of time. Now, perhaps not everybody is as emotionally driven as I am. Perhaps there are people who could, maybe engineers are the best, right?

Engineers seem to have this discipline, this mindset, this consistency, this steadiness. And engineers tend to have a good job that pays them a good income. And they have a tight budget and they have a beautifully developed investment portfolio. And they read all the books on financial planning. They listen to "Radical Personal Finance" because Joshua said years ago he was gonna teach the CFP curriculum.

And they just have the consistent plan. And that works, that works. But does engineers frequently reach a couple million dollars, right? A few million dollars, five million dollars? It's pretty unusual, though, to find an engineer with a yacht. I've never met one. A small boat, yes. Yeah, a center console fishing boat, yes.

A bass boat, yes. I've never met an engineer with a yacht. That's not to say that there aren't a whole lot of people who've destroyed their lives because of emotionalism. But it is to say that if you can figure out a balance, how to harness that emotional desire in a positive way, control the risk of stupid decisions, control the downside, that's probably your most powerful tool.

I hope you'll think about it. I don't think any of us are mis-served by surrounding ourselves with more of what we want. Be it the kinds of people that we want in our lives and connecting ourselves with them by reading books about them or filling our algorithmic social media feeds with their stuff.

We're certainly not served by intentionally sticking ourselves in their way and being the kind of person at the gym at 6 a.m. or the kind of person at church on Wednesday night or whatever version of that is. And there's a pretty strong argument for surrounding ourselves with them, with people, even on a permanent basis.

Am I gonna buy a house on Ocean Reef Island in Panama City, Panama? I just might. I just might. Are you gonna buy a house in the exclusive neighborhood in your town? You just might. I don't know if we're ever gonna be able to calculate the exact outcome of these kinds of decisions, but I think there's something here that we should think about more and we should research more.

I found that author's, wish I could cite 'em, I didn't look 'em up, forgive me, but I found that author's paper on obesity being infectious to be pretty compelling. Regardless of the ultimate truthfulness of the author's claim, it's kind of a mind virus that I'll probably never be able to get away from.

And regardless of whether it's proven ever to be true or not, it's pretty immaterial. I think it's useful to think about obesity as an infectious disease. I think it's useful. And to me, that's a pretty good standard for the truthfulness of something, is that we don't have to say this is true, but is it useful?

Is information or an idea useful? And similarly, I think it's useful to think about wealth and poverty as an infectious condition. Let's not put the label disease on it, an infectious condition. (laughs) And let's try to surround ourselves with people who are doing smart stuff with money. Maybe all the other values are infectious.

I know that if I watch a movie of a guy acting with courage, I go out and I'm more willing to be courageous. Maybe they're all infectious. I'm not gonna go that far today, but I do think it's useful to think about them as infectious. I hope that's useful to you.

Those are my thoughts for the day. I'll be back with you very soon.