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Get your tickets now at westcoastthunder.com/concert. That's westcoastthunder.com/concert. Benefiting the Riverside National Cemetery. Today on Radical Personal Finance, it's a live Q&A. 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 Sheets. I am your host. Today is Friday, May 10, 2024, and on this Friday, as I do on any Friday in which I can arrange the appropriate technology to record, we do live Q&A. You set the agenda for these shows. It's all up to you.

Here on Radical Personal Finance, Friday is open line Friday. You can call in, talk about anything that you want, raise any topic that you want, ask any questions that you want. It can be personal in nature. We can talk about your situation. It can be general in nature. We can talk about any theory, any philosophy that you have, any questions.

You're welcome to raise any beefs you have with me, any points of disagreement. I enjoy that. I think that good interaction provides us with a good opportunity to get closer and closer to truth in our society, and so I love it when you guys do that. If you would like to join me for one of these Friday Q&A shows, you can do that by going to patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance, patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance, sign up, support the show on Patreon, and that will gain access for you to one of our Friday Q&A shows, and then you'll be able to join me next week.

We begin today with Shaw in Ohio. Shaw, welcome to the show. How can I serve you today? Hey, Joshua. Thanks so much. I have two questions, if we can get to both, but one is more pressing. My wife and I recently welcomed our baby girl. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you.

The baby came early, so she came in 26 weeks, and we're dealing with some NICU stuff. Not the home birth that we were anticipating, but certainly grateful for the care that we're getting. One thing that has come up is that we were trying to avoid giving the baby a for various reasons.

Hold on. Hang on just a moment. You broke up right when you were saying we're trying to avoid giving the baby a Hang on one second. Let's get synced up. You're trying to avoid. Hold on. Hold on. You're trying to avoid. Start from there, please. We were trying to avoid giving the baby a social security number, but through human error, the paperwork got filed, and the hospital admitted their error to us.

My question is about these sorts of matters. There are various reasons to avoid having a social security number, but I don't know if you the number deleted or voided. Apparently, those could be options for us. We are aware that we could get passport information for the baby just using the birth certificate, and that was our intention originally.

I don't know, from an international escape standpoint, if having a voided or deleted social security number shows up in a system in any way that would make a border crossing any more onerous than it needs to be. Wow. First of all, how's your baby doing? Is she recovering? Is she growing?

Is everything on the right track? For the most part, yes. She was growing really well. It looks like she is dealing with a little bit of an infection, but she's responding to the treatment, and so, you know, continued prayers to God for God's grace and for the excellent medical staff and all of that sort of thing.

I am enormous for all of the commentary and things that I have to say and try to encourage people and as you were undoubtedly hoping for a wonderful, easy, smooth, natural birth. I tell you what, we need to thank God continually for the miracle of cesarean delivery. We need to thank God continually for the doctors and the nurses and the technology that has been developed.

The fact that you could have a baby at 26 weeks and the baby could generally be doing pretty well is absolutely amazing. With regard to social security, your specific question, the short answer is I don't really have any idea. I would love, let me answer your question first, and then I'd love you to tell me and the audience just a little bit more of what you are hoping to accomplish by the baby not having a social security number because that's not something I have talked about publicly, but I think it'd be interesting to hear your perspective.

With regard to the question, I don't know the process of deleting it from the system. I have not been through that. I don't know how it's done. I don't know if it's done. I don't know any of those details. In terms of international border crossings, I don't think it would make any difference with regard to international border crossings whatsoever.

I've never been asked for a social security number, and I'm not aware of any way that that particular number exists in any kind of international context. So if you are able to successfully suppress and delete the number from the social security system, and if subsequently you can have a passport issued for your daughter, I don't think you would have any problem from an international perspective.

It's just not a number. It's purely a tax identification number that the United States uses to classify and to track people, and it's always used in domestic affairs, but I'm not aware of any use of it on an international basis. So that's the best I can give you, not having gone through the process and not having any more inside information.

Tell us more, though, about what you've learned and what you were hoping to do in terms of avoiding the issuance of a social security number at all. Well, I have to admit I'm not entirely clear all of the reasons. Some of this comes from being in various sort of freedom communities, where at times people even avoid having birth certificates for their kids.

My best understanding about it is that perhaps it makes a difference if at some point in the future you are trying to renounce your citizenship, and it generally just kind of falls under the category of trying to provide as little data to a system that we feel is really corrupt and does not deserve our data and is not a good steward of our data.

I would also mention we talked with our CPA, and our credit is minimal from the standpoint that some people have said you would need a social security number to claim your child as a dependent. But it's not clear that we would really be getting much financial benefit from doing that.

Right. Let me just give you my thoughts. If you were calling me up and you were just asking me the question to say, "Hey, Joshua, should I get my child a social security number or not?" Let me just give you what I have thought about on that subject, and you can factor it in to any other research that you have done.

When I had my first child, I hadn't really thought about this, and so I just went down kind of the standard route. I assumed that what you should do for children is get their social security numbers. I assumed that that was the right thing to do, and that was, of course, the normal path.

As always, the normal path is always the easiest path. Then I started looking into it. I can't remember which child it was. I realized, "Oh, it is possible to not have a social security identification number for a child. It is possible." At the end of my inquiries some years ago, though, I came to the conclusion that it is possible, but it makes everything continually difficult.

You need to be very committed to it in order for it to work. I respect any person who is so committed to his values and his ideology that he's willing to do extra work. You'll always find me a friend in your corner to say, "Good for you for doing it." It is important going in that you understand that it is challenging and difficult.

I would love to see the entire use of the social security number disbanded. I think that would be in the spirit of what it means to be an American. Americans traditionally have famously been suspicious of any kind of national identification number. The social security number is a cultural aberration in the broad scale of history of the United States.

It is a federally issued identification number that's done on a federal basis, that's used for tracking, that's used for all kinds of purposes. What I've noticed, however, over the years is that it was a backdoor program. My social security card says very clearly on it, "This document is not to be used for identification purposes.

It's exclusively for basically interaction with the Social Security Administration." If my memory is correct, my children's cards, they've removed all of that. So all of the skepticism that Americans formerly had about the issuing of national identification numbers seems to have broadly disappeared. And now most people seem to be pretty accepting of national identification numbers.

And the social security number itself is used as a form of identification that many people request. As you well know, you go to the doctor, you go to the dentist, you go to all kinds of places, they ask for your social security number. So from a freedom governmental perspective, my question is just, does it really matter?

So, first of all, does it really matter? And number two, is it the most effective approach? So speaking to does it really matter? It might. And again, I'm firmly in favor of anybody who says, "This is my conviction and I'm going to follow through on it." It might ultimately matter, but I'm not convinced that it's going to be that big a deal in the fullness of time.

Whether you're registered with a social security number or not, whether you're registered with a name or not, there's going to be some form of file or identification that's associated with you. And it's not that hard for an intrusive government to create some tracking mechanism. Now you can certainly make it a lot easier on them by giving them a social security number and registering everyone dually, but it's totally doable.

And I think that we're probably with the continual collection of biometrics, we're probably... The nightmare dystopian scenario is that it's largely done based on biometrics rather than anything else. And any time you interact with the government, if you don't have the social security number, it makes your interactions more difficult and you could argue that it raises your profile.

I tried to do a passport application for one of my children born abroad without the issuance of a social security number and I found it very difficult. And ultimately I wound up getting a social security number and registering on that basis. Now I wasn't committed, so it's possible that it could have been done by somebody who was more committed than I was, but I just found it very difficult and I think that it raises your profile.

And with the advanced integration of biometrics, I think that that's probably a bigger concern than something like a social security number. From a day-to-day basis, I think that your child would face, not having a social security number, your child will face many, many challenges. Now if you could get a passport issued without a social security number, that would be helpful.

I don't think you're gonna get a passport issued without a birth certificate, so that would seem to be extreme. And if you wanted to live the kind of lifestyle in which you were totally off the grid, living within the borders of the United States, but not engaging in kind of the normal things, flying, going abroad, then I think I would guess that you could do that.

But I don't think you could do it without, I don't know that you could get a passport without a birth certificate. I think the biggest challenge you'll face is the new REAL ID requirements. I'm personally persuaded that, so if you look at the history of a national identification number, Americans voted against it time and time and time again.

I'm convinced the REAL ID Act was basically a backdoor pathway to a national identification number, is that after failing many times at establishing a national database where each citizen of the United States is numbered and counted on a national basis, that the REAL ID was basically the way of getting at that.

And I have not observed, since the implementation of REAL ID, I have not observed any cultural pushback against that. Most people don't seem to realize, they don't seem to care. Basically everybody has become REAL ID compliant. And if you look at kind of the broad acceptance of biometrics, it's pretty astonishing.

Just as a sake of example, I always refuse biometrics when leaving the United States. The United States has now integrated an automated biometric camera-based system for leaving the United States on an airplane. You've seen this at the airport when you go to get on an airplane. I always refuse, and that refusal has been easier in the past.

They specifically state, "Hey, you can refuse," and that refusal was easier in the past. This last time that I refused, I stood at the gate. I was the first one in line for boarding my flight with my wife and children, and I refused biometrics. Normally when you refuse biometrics, the airline staff comes over and threatens that they need to call Border Patrol and that they're going to send an agent over, and then you say, "Look, I'm a U.S.

citizen," and frequently they check your passport, and you're through a couple minutes later. I stood there for 45 minutes with my wife and children right next to the line because they refused to let me board without sending a Border Patrol officer to manually inspect my passport so that we could board without biometric identification.

I stood there, and they threatened in multiple ways. The airline agent said, "You're probably going to miss this flight because Border Patrol can't come very quickly, and we're not going to let you board unless you do that," and I said, "Listen, I was here at the very first. I'm on time.

I don't know what my rights and rules are, but I'm here. I'm ready to go. I've got everything lined up. I'm simply refusing biometrics." We went back and forth. They called Border Patrol, went back and forth, looked at my passport. Finally, after 45 minutes of intimidation, they finally let me on the airplane.

In the meantime, I got to sit there and watch the entire flight board, and I was the only one—I and my family—we were the only ones who refused biometrics. The counter-argument, someone would say, "Well, look, Border Patrol deletes the information very quickly for U.S. citizens and somewhat more slowly for non-U.S.

citizens." All right, maybe all that's true. Maybe people have just accepted it, but it's pretty obvious to me that if we've got a plane of 150 people, and I'm the only one out of 150 people who refuses biometrics, it's pretty obvious to me that this perspective of opting out is not culturally possible.

It's not culturally strong. Not many people are—I'm in a very, very small minority, and you, trying to avoid the issuance of a Social Security number for your child, you're in a very, very small minority. The question is, is this actually the best solution? I've pretty well decided that it doesn't make sense to try to live off the grid because it's not really doable.

It's not really plausibly doable in today's world. When you do it, because you're so culturally out of place that you probably have a higher profile than if you don't do it. I have two arguments. Number one, that when more data is created, that doesn't necessarily mean that the individual risk is higher, because now there's so much data being created that more and more stuff can fall through the cracks.

I don't know that just because they're collecting more data, just because people are all being issued with Social Security numbers basically automatically, I'm not sure that that's the great danger for freedom and liberty as some people think it is. But more importantly, I think that the best form of defense against this is not to try to be the individual going up against the government, but rather to go and get another government on your side and to get your governments going at each other.

And so the problem, especially if you didn't have a birth certificate issued, is that you may be able to live in the United States, but you will never be able to get another citizenship without that birth certificate from the United States. You'll never be able to get a third citizenship, a fourth citizenship.

You'll never be able to get multiple governments on your side. And I think that that's the reason I have emphasized so much what I've emphasized in international escape plan stuff, is that I'm pretty persuaded that governments do not respect citizens, they only respect other governments. And so the most important thing is to get other governments on your side, not to try to be the person going up against the government, especially when you're one out of 500, one out of 1,000 perhaps, maybe that's too much, maybe it's one out of 500 or one out of 300 in terms of you against them.

Because almost any kind of attack track that you take, almost any path of resistance that you take against tyranny, if you're one out of 100, then all of the fellow citizens are going to line up and do everything they can to help the government squash you. And so I just don't think – what I decided on is that that pathway of resistance, while I respect you and anyone else who does it for doing it, I don't think that pathway of resistance is the most fruitful, which is why I've not kind of encouraged it.

So those are just some thoughts for you to think about. As I say, I don't know the answer to your specific question. Go ahead and give your thought, your response, and then go with your second question, please. Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate your thoughts. And it's a lot to think about.

And I think I tend to agree with you. The second question was about a whole life insurance policy. And I think it probably would suit more of like a consultation call sometime. So the one question I have instead is, didn't you do a podcast about men's values, and is that still available?

Is that something that's still out there? Was it with your father or with somebody in your family? Right. I did. Yes. Encouraging Christian Fathers is what that is called. It's a podcast that I did for quite a while with my own father. And I haven't updated it in several years, but I'm intending to update it again soon.

But it's still available wherever you listen to podcasts. It's called Encouraging Christian Fathers. Great. I will check it out. All right. That's it. Thank you so much. Thanks. It was good to hear from you. And may you have strength and courage and wisdom as you continue to fight for your daughter's life.

Jason in Kentucky. Welcome to the show. How can I serve you today? Hi, Joshua. Greetings. So we arrived at the family camp. Wonderful. And you asked me to call in with my question. Yes. So I got a chance today to do that. So kind of a spinning off of the first caller's concern about receiving a social security number at birth.

So I'm actually calling about, you kind of surprised me a few episodes back about UTMA. And we started having this conversation about how I actually feel like UTMAs are, I think, just greatly overlooked, really undervalued. And that there is a lot that parents, if they're engaged in it, can do with the UTMA.

And maybe for context for those who don't know, that being like a universal transfer to minors, where that account belongs to the child, but there needs to be a custodian who sees it as a parent who's legally kind of running that account, administering the account until the owner becomes a majority.

And so, yeah, I wanted to make my case for why I am enthusiastic about it and kind of see what you think. I'm so glad that you called in. So let me just state what I have said previously for context. And then I want to hear your counter case.

So the UTMA account, Uniform Transfer to Minors Act and UGMA accounts, is a custodial account that an individual can put money into for the benefit of a minor. And then that allows the minor to receive money. And there's generally no tax consequences to it. It just sits in the account for them until they are a legal adult, which is usually 18 years old.

And then at the age of 18, they now can use the money, they can do whatever they want with the money, and it's freely theirs. And what I stated, as far as my position, is that I'm skeptical of UTMA accounts. While I think I could design a circumstance in which I think they're the best they are, I could probably design something where they're useful, especially if we get into ownership rules and we have very specific needs from a tax and ownership perspective, then it could be useful.

But my big concern is that it doesn't allow the giver of assets to control the money once the child is an adult. And so you've got a drug addict, loser son who turns 18 and all of a sudden has full control of the money, and he can do whatever he wants with it now, and it's enabling bad decisions.

And the rebuttal that people usually give is, "Well, that's only if he knows about it." And my point is that you have a fiduciary duty to inform him about it, and so now you're creating a scenario in which the minor knows that, "I'm going to have access to money," and you don't have the ability to pull it back.

So that was the basic argument that I present generally when I'm asked about it, and now I want to hear your rebuttal. Tell us kind of what you love about the UTMA and why you think it's so useful. Yeah, and I agree that it's definitely a risk, and for that reason, I would discourage someone from having like $100,000 in the UTMA or some amount of money of substantial value because that risk is too great.

But basically what I've done with our kids, I mentioned the social security number because as soon as they were born and we got the social security card in the mail, the first thing I did was open UTMA accounts for each of them and put in a little bit of money and bought a few stocks for them.

And so they're one month old and can't talk, but they already own some assets. And for me, it's not about trying to pick the greatest stocks in the world or to make them millionaires before they actually do not want them to be millionaires before they turn 18, unless they earn it themselves, but it's just about kind of instilling the value of ownership and for them to, as they grow up and as they become capable of understanding a little bit of what does it mean to own something, what does it mean to, what do companies do?

For example, if it could be an easy choice of things like gaming companies or things that kids are involved in, they engage with, that they can relate to it. And as they get older to kind of teach them, okay, here's what you own, here's what that does and what that means, and here's how that can benefit you in the future.

And then, of course, especially when you get into those years, like around 10 to 12 years of age where they can start to, when they start to have interest and they start to emerge with their talent to say, okay, here's some funds that so far have just been invested in stocks and that's fine, but we can take this and I can help you as the responsible party and to say, what would you like to do, what are some things you could explore?

And it might be spending it on a plane ticket to go to a certain country they would love to see, or it might be starting a business that might be, we'll see what it is as their interests emerge, but to kind of use it as something that's kind of like the opportunity file.

And I envision something like between five to 10,000, as far as like a dollar amount in my head. And it's enough to do something really cool with, but it's not too much money. And then, and essentially the goal is to use it well before they reach age of majority.

So we never worry about them being irresponsible with it, that then it gets used probably before they even start to drive, and so that's kind of the goal, the game plan. And that's kind of where I see the radical side of it, that it kind of becomes the opportunity file where I have a reason to teach them about those things because they have that.

And it really is theirs, it legally is theirs, but then we can transform it into something even more valuable with those experiences they have, if it goes the way I envision it. So I'm curious what your thoughts are. I can see the argument, and I think it's a good one.

And so the first distinction I would make is there's a couple reasons why the UTMA, in what you're describing, why the UTMA is an appropriate scenario. First, in what you're describing, you're not trying to accumulate significant assets. You're not trying to accumulate $150,000 for a college education and do that in a UTMA account.

And so if we compare the UTMA against something like a 529 account, if somebody's goal is to accumulate a six-figure sum for the child's future benefit, I would say a 529 account is usually going to be a superior choice because what it allows the parent to do is to retain control over the money, and it is tax-advantaged.

One of the downsides of the UTMA account is it's subject to the kiddie tax. So any taxable earnings in the account are taxed, the first, what is it, $2,500, I think? First $2,500 go to the child and normally would have a 0% tax rate. But beyond $2,500 of taxable income in the account, unearned income, that's taxed at the parent's marginal tax bracket.

So due to the kiddie tax rules, that's why UTMA accounts are not appropriate tax shelters for wealthy parents who are trying to transfer assets to their child to get them out of the parent's taxable assets to lower the tax rate. You can't because the assets are going to be taxed at the parent's highest marginal rate.

I would argue that at least be the child's money that's paying the tax, but anyway, ignore that. So for significant funds, for a six-figure sum, a 529 account would be generally a superior account. Then the other account that we would usually look to would be something like a Roth account.

And so a Roth account could accomplish a similar benefit of a sense of ownership and a similar benefit to a sense of ownership, but the Roth account requires earned income in order to start. And you're not going to be generating absent baby modeling, genuine baby modeling. You're not generating earned income for a one-year-old.

So the Roth account really can't be started until a later time in the child's name. So you're not getting those same benefits. Plus the downside of a Roth account is you're teaching the child that this is for your retirement and you're not getting any of those current benefits of, "Hey, I'm really into gaming right now, so I'm going to buy these game stocks and I'm going to spend the money on a really great trip abroad." You can do all of that with a UTMA account when the child is a minor, but you can't do that with a Roth IRA because it's a retirement account that's generally seen for retirement.

And then the other important thing is that you're not just doing this with physical money or with a simple – you're not doing this with physical money or physical assets. You're trying to establish the ownership of securities. And so if you're going to establish ownership of securities, you need an actual legal title to put on the account, unlike just money that can be earned from flipping bicycles and selling lemonade and those kinds of things.

And then finally, you're trying to genuinely instill a sense of ownership and you're trying to say, "This is your money. I may have seeded the account for you, but this is your money. This is your money that you control. I'm just the custodian on it, but you're the one who makes the decisions and you can gain access to this money.

And so if you can invest effectively and grow the balance, you can go ahead and use this money. This is your money and you can do whatever you want with it, but – and it's legally your money, genuinely legally your money, but it's not constrained in a retirement account and it's available to you without any restrictions.

So I think that with that line of thinking, I believe you're absolutely correct. The UTMA account is your superior option for that. Yeah. I especially think about some of these founders and people have been really – you think about almost anybody, like a Bill Gates type of person who sees jobs, a lot of their skills emerged in teenagehood.

I think that's probably true for a lot of regular folks too, and so that's kind of a – when I think about generational planning, that's kind of what I have in my head, empowering that to some degree. Right. Or maybe using it for a Roth IRA, if they want to do that.

Totally. Totally. And what I'm emphasizing, and I think you're agreeing with, is this is being used as a training tool, not as a financial, exclusively financial tool. So we're not trying to reduce taxes. We're not trying to move assets, move ownership. We're trying to use the laws that exist to establish ownership for a minor so that he can trade stocks or some variation of that and know that it's his money that he has full control over, that he gets full access to prior to 18 with your approval, and full access to whether he has your approval or not after the age of 18.

And it's not primarily a tax tool. It's a training tool investing into the child's sense of ownership so that he'll take interest in the companies that he interacts with. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're exactly right. Yeah. Yeah. All right. You've persuaded me. I agree. I think that your use case is ideal, and I agree.

I think that... Look out for Asian majority, be careful with that. Right. Right. I think that what's evident to me from talking it through with you is that my brain automatically reverts to large numbers. And I need to be careful when I'm answering a question about a UTMA account, I need to be careful to specify what amount of money are we talking about here?

Because when someone says, "I want to set aside money for my child," I'm automatically mentally interpreting that to mean, "I want to set aside $100,000 to $250,000 for a child's education." And I'm saying, "Well, this is an inferior option when compared to a 529 account, or a Roth IRA account for the long-term, this is an inferior option for that." But what I should do is I should be more careful to say, "What amount of money are we talking about and what's the goal?" Because the two factors that you've described of, "Hey, we're talking $3,000 or $9,000, whatever it grows to, we're talking modest amounts, and we want the child to have the confidence of ownership, and we just need some way of titling the account so that he can actually buy and sell and trade and do all that stuff on a brokerage account or other exchange in some way," then I think that that makes absolute sense.

And I need to be careful that I don't automatically just substitute six-figure sums when somebody may not be intending that. Yeah. And that's kind of what surprised me a little bit, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So, it's good to reconcile our definition of terms, right? Yeah, absolutely.

Well, awesome. I love that you called in. Anything else you want to cover, Jason, before I go on to the next caller? That's everything for today. Awesome. Well, I thank you again for coming to the family camp. I loved interacting with you there, and look forward to connecting with you again soon.

It's great to be able to put names to faces, to voices on the phone. Lauren in Illinois. Welcome to the show. How can I serve you today, Lauren? Hi, Joshua. Thanks for taking my call. My pleasure. Well, first, I wanted to just share an impact that your podcast has had on me.

I was just looking it up, and you released the Friday Q&A last year, March 6, 2023, about birth tourism, and you talked a lot about just the physical explanation of birthing and utilizing midwives and just different, you know, you just explained very well what the process of birthing was like, and it got me thinking, and I actually got pregnant later on last year and ended up giving birth at a birthing center with midwives.

It was, like, the most beautiful experience, and I just wanted to say thank you, because I don't think I would have gone down the route that I did. I probably would have entertained using midwives, but would have probably done so in a more clinical setting, like at a hospital or something like that, and instead I went with a birthing center that had a lot less intervention, and it was just, it was amazing, and I wanted to share it because I know that positive birth stories are few and far between when it comes to media.

Yes. Because the media likes to share the scary stuff, all the unknowns, and I think, especially as a first-time mom going into it, there were a lot of unknowns, but having gone through it now, it was just, like, the most beautiful experience, and I know that it was the case because there were less interventions, there was just, you know, there were medical professionals involved, but they were there to do it in the most natural route possible, and I was just so thankful for it.

So I wanted to share that with you first. I am thrilled that you... Are you ready for some hot stuff? Oh yeah. The WNBA is back on ION. The action is on Friday night. Fakes the pass and scores. The spotlight is on the players. Back to back buckets. A bona fide star.

And the crowd is on edge. This game is on fire. You can't ask for more than that. The WNBA is on Friday night, starting May 17th. Find out more at WNBA.com. First of all, you've shared that, and that you've had that experience, and I love hearing just a few murmurs in the background of your little baby, and it makes all the difference in the world.

So I'll just comment on what you said, just to say thank you for that. And it's important, because one of my goals, one of my current life goals, is to do anything possible to equip mothers and fathers to have as many children as they want to have. And I think that that's something that we can change, especially if we approach it holistically.

And while it's not particularly common for a financial planner to talk about birthing, I think that there's some things, some of the reasons I do it is because I think there's some things that we can improve about it. And our culture has always, not always, but our culture has isolated birthing, and it has created fear in the hearts of women and prospective mothers all across the culture.

And I'm convinced that that's largely a psychiatric condition that is unnecessary. It doesn't have to be that way. And if you listen to experienced midwives who have crossed the globe, there are cultures in which giving birth is just perceived as totally normal, generally considered to be broadly painless, straightforward, all of that.

And so I think that we want to hold two things really carefully. We want to hold that birthing is a normal and natural process. Being pregnant is not a disease. And then simultaneously, even as with the first caller, before you jumped on, simultaneously recognize that we need to be grateful for the incredible medical technology that we have that saves the lives of countless mothers and babies all in.

And before you jumped on, the first caller, they had been planning on the birth of their first baby and planning for a natural birth, and the baby came at 26 weeks. And the baby's in the NICU, she's doing okay, but she came at 26 weeks. And so I love that we have both of these calls on here because both of them are important.

We want to have good medical supervision. We want to have good, modern, informed, highly qualified medical care. And we want to do it in a human context that recognizes that the needs of the mother are really, really important. And as you are describing from the words that if a mother's birthing experience, especially her first baby, if a mother's first baby birthing experience can be a beautiful, treasured memory for her, it transforms her initial days with her new baby, and it transforms the family's experience of childbirth in an enormous way based upon that first initial experience being beautiful.

And there are being something that's treasured. And that's what I try to encourage people, like for my wife and me, probably our most intimate moments together as a couple have been the births of our five children, because they were beautiful and it was just us. It's an intense emotional experience that is beautiful and rewarding.

And so I wouldn't trade that for, unless it was necessary for the medical needs of a child or my wife, I wouldn't trade that for anything. And yet those outcomes are much more probable when you're in an environment where that's seen as a goal that's worthy of care to be held alongside proper medical care.

And midwives are highly trained. They're highly trained to what to watch out for. They're there to do a job, and that frees you in order to focus on the experience and you can have great outcomes. And so I want to increase birth rates in the world. And there's a good friend of mine that I just consider as almost a perfect foil to this, that good friend of mine, both he and she wanted to have lots of babies.

And they got married, they had their first baby. They always thought they would have lots and lots of children. Her pregnancy was so difficult. She was so enormously sick. And then the childbirth experience was so brutal for her that they said, "That's it. We're done. One child and done." And I don't think in her case that there's any...

I'm not arguing that anything could have been done differently in her case that would have made it different. So that's not what I'm saying. I'm using it as an example to say that if mothers can have birthing experiences that are gentle and that are warm and that are fulfilling and that are intimate and that create precious memories while they do the hard work of birthing the baby, then it can completely transform their attitudes towards motherhood, our societies, we can do it better.

And we can do it better while holding on to the twin necessaries of a world-class experience for the mother and for the baby and for the father, as well as proper up-to-date medical care. So that's why I care about it. And it thrills my heart to no end to hear your story.

Thank you. Yeah, of course. And thank you for sharing all that. And I totally agree. And we'll just call out for the other listeners. One of the things that we look for in our medical care was that our midwives... My husband's perspective was that he was, of course, most worried about me and wanted to be comfortable that I could get the appropriate medical care as needed.

And so one of the things that comforted him was our birthing center had done test drills to the hospital. It was six minutes door to door. There were certain birth situations in which they would not deliver, but they had practicing rights at a local hospital. So if necessary, they could be our medical care at the hospital.

And we would also have all the other equipment and doctors around that were necessary. So that was super helpful. And then I'll call out with regards to the increasing birth rate. One of the comments my husband made when we were younger was just that he wanted to have three children and his reason being was that it was above the national average.

And I just kind of discounted that at the time. But through listening to your podcast, I've actually bought into it and seen that perspective a little bit more and have truly considered it also in addition to having a very positive birth experience. Good. Take them one at a time, one at a time, and then work it out between you guys.

But that's amazing. Exactly. How else can I serve you today? So I did have a financial question, and this is pretty laughable, but I interviewed for a position two weeks postpartum. You are a warrior, warrior through and through. It was definitely a God thing, and I got a job offer, have accepted it.

And so we're going to be moving to Florida. I currently live in Texas with my husband and our now six-week-old. And we are considering whether or not we should sell our house or rent it out. And I just wanted to get some thoughts and your perspective on it. So the reason why we're considering renting the house out is we have a really fantastic interest rate on our mortgage.

We went into it, we got a 15-year mortgage. This is back in 2017, and we've paid off a decent chunk, I think, like 40% of the mortgage is paid off, or 40% of the house value when we bought it was paid off. So we have 11 more years on it.

I'm sorry, we refinanced, so that wouldn't make sense unless I told you that we refinanced. But we have 11 more years on our mortgage, 60% more to pay off. Considering renting it out, it is a large house. We bought a forever home and expected to stay here and be in it for a while, so it's quite large.

We'd have to rent it out for a lot of money because it's a six-bedroom home. We would probably need to rent it out for at least $4,500 to break even. We're looking at, I think the ideal number would be $6,000 versus selling our home and then either renting or buying in the market in Florida.

And of course, we have a really high interest rate that we'd be picking up, so probably in the 7% range. So I just wanted to get your thoughts and things to consider. We've done a lot of math and spreadsheets and all the things behind it, and we can make a case based off of assumptions towards either.

Okay. So just to clarify, given your expected income in Florida, given the costs of buying a house that's appropriate for you, you think that you could afford to keep the house in Texas, rent it out and simultaneously purchase another house to live in in Florida, is that right? Yeah.

Okay. Well, then if that's the case, then it's fairly simple and straightforward. And it comes down to how your experience is as a landlord of the benefits as compared to the frustration and difficulty and how much you bristle at the extra work. The more property that you own and control, the more potential wealth you have in the long run based upon increases in property value and based upon the fact that your tenant can pay off your mortgage for you.

So from a purely financial perspective, everyone who wants to be rich should go out as quickly as possible, purchase as much property as you can finance, get people in place to pay off your mortgages for you, and then sit back and hold that for a very long time. The fastest way to become a millionaire in the United States with real estate is just go borrow a million dollars and get your tenants to pay it off for you.

And so that's what you would do if you go ahead and purchase an additional home in Florida for you to live in and keep your Texas property. And that is that you're always going to be better off because of owning more property. Let's say the house in Texas is $400,000 and the house in Florida is $600,000.

So if you own both of those and you have a million dollars worth of property and the property increases in value by 10%, there's an increase in your net worth of $100,000 as compared to if you only own a $600,000 house in Florida and there's an increase in your net worth of $60,000.

So conceptually, for those who want to build wealth quickly, you should set a goal of purchasing as much property as possible, as quickly as possible, and then fill that property with tenants and setting those tenants up to pay off your property for you. I've talked about this in doing it in a strategic way.

So let's say that you're very strategic about building wealth with real estate. What would you do? Well, at 18 years old, you would go out, you would have a job, you would be financeable, and you would go and purchase a house. You would fill the house with tenants, roommates, to pay your mortgage payment.

You would repeat it at 20, and you would fill the house with roommates to pay your mortgage tenant. So now you've moved on to the second house. You would repeat it at 23. You go and buy a house. This time you go ahead and live in it for a year yourself.

Your first two houses are rented out to multiple tenants, college students. Then your third house, you put another tenant in it. And by 25, if you could own five houses, that'd be amazing. Then you go ahead and move into your forever house, and you just make sure that those tenants are continually paying down your mortgages for you until all the houses are own debt free and you're a multimillionaire with real estate.

That's a perfectly viable plan. All right. So now that we've extolled the virtues of the plan, what is the downside? Well, the downside is simply that it takes work to deal with houses. It takes work to deal with tenants, and that work is not always fun or even palatable for many people.

Many people don't want to deal with it. They don't want to deal with dealing with tenants. They don't want to deal with fixing the house up when the previous tenant trashes the kitchen and fixing all the stuff. Now you might have a big advantage that if you could rent this house fairly easily, you would be dealing with a higher end tenant, and that may be an advantage for you that perhaps that tenant is better.

I don't know. The point is simply that real estate tenants are not time free. So if you can do it and you're willing to do it, or you can try it and see what your experience is, then it's probably better for you to keep both houses and try it.

If you find that it's not working for you, you don't like managing the tenants, or this house just doesn't rent well, you have so many vacancies that you can never recoup your money, or it's going to sink you financially because of those vacancies, then you would say, "You know what?

I need to go ahead and not pursue this path anymore." But basically as I see it, it's as simple as that. All the rest of the stuff with interest rates and expected returns and all of that, it's all interesting and it could be factored in, but at its core, I think those two things I've said, the pro and the con, cover 80% of the decision.

The pro is if you want to build wealth, a good way to build wealth is to acquire as much property as you can finance, and then make your tenants pay it off for you. And the con is it's not time free, and it could sink you financially if you don't have enough margin.

It does take time and energy to deal with tenants, and it's got to be worth it to you in the long run to put that time and energy in. But if you're willing to do it, and you find that, "Hey, we can rent this house okay. We can get good tenants.

It's not vacant too much," then yeah, you're better off keeping both houses as far as I'm concerned. Alright. Awesome. I really appreciate that. Yeah. Definitely a lot of things to consider. Right. It's the challenge of whether or not the vacancies will be the make or break of the decision.

But one of the things I had shared with my husband is at least trying to rent is not a permanent decision versus selling that's very permanent, "We're never going to get this house back," so something to continue to discuss and consider. And I think that if the money works based upon your income, your savings, and all that stuff for you to keep both houses, I think it'll be a nice thing for you to have too as a backup plan.

You may get to Florida, this job is great for the first six months, and then it just isn't great after that. And so being able to turn around and go back to the house that you know you love, the forever home that you have in Texas, that could be a great nice thing to have available to you as an option as well.

And the good thing is that both of these areas are in high growth areas, good economic growth, good reasons to expect that real estate is good, good reasons to expect that you'd be able to find tenants who want to rent the property, and it's just going to come down to does this property rent easily enough that we can find tenants that we don't have too many vacancies.

And I don't know, right? Higher end, I mean $6,000 a month is not super high end but it's certainly high end. It could be, it can be better and it can be worse depending on what the local market provides and what the competition is. So try it out, see what see what happens.

Thanks, I'll report back. I love that you do. Thank you so much. And with that, we conclude our Friday Q&A show. Thank you guys very much for listening. I love that you love it when you guys call in and update us on situations. So we had, I think, two callers there that talking about past commentary and I love it.

If you'd like to join me on one of these shows next week, you can do that by going to patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance, support the show on Patreon, and that will gain access for you to one of these Friday Q&A shows. I look forward to speaking to you very soon. Bye. you