Today on Radical Personal Finance, live Q&A. Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insights, and encouragement you need for the rich and meaningful life now, while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less. My name is Joshua, I'm your host, today is Friday, August 9, 2024.
And on this Friday, as we do on any Friday in which I can arrange to record a live show, we have a live show. Open line Friday, you call in, talk about anything you want, raise any topic, raise any question, you drive the show. If you would like to gain access to one of these Friday Q&A shows, you can do that by becoming a patron of the show, go to patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance, support the show on Patreon and that will gain access for you to one of these Friday Q&A shows, and I will welcome you to do that.
We begin today with Daniel in California. Daniel, welcome to the show. How can I serve you today, sir? Hey Joshua, thanks for having me. My pleasure. Yeah, I was hoping for some personal advice from you today. Great. I'm pretty good at thinking things through, so I spent the last few minutes waiting for the pop on the call and trying to elegantly frame the question, but I'll just jump right into it.
Basically, I'm in my late 20s and trying to figure out some direction with a career. I've got a few different things that I've had going for quite some time, different kind of part-time jobs and pseudo careers in different fields, and I've bounced between things a bit. I'm really trying to narrow in on one thing, and so I'm not quite sure what direction to pivot in.
I was hoping I could maybe lay that out to you. Okay. Yeah, so the business I quite literally grew up in was a commercial real estate appraisal business. So there's a family business that I've worked for for some time, and most of my corporate background is in real estate appraisal.
I've also gone back and forth between that and the idea of vocational ministry inside the church. Both of those have kind of panned out to an extent, to somewhat, but they each kind of have their problems, and so I'm kind of bouncing between these two things and also maybe considering a third option.
The family business, you know, there's a lot of opportunity there. There's a lot of opportunity to be an owner in this business, to grow it, but every time I kind of jump fully into that, there's just tensions that arise, family dynamics that come up, things that kind of inhibit further growth.
So I've looked at that, jumping into the business, I've looked at maybe having a career in real estate appraisal apart from that, but to be honest, the appraisal work itself is at times a little bit soul-crushing for me, so that's why I was kind of pivoting into ministry. So that has its own roadblocks.
I live in Los Angeles, and it's been tough to kind of pursue that full-time. It's kind of a lifestyle where I would have to do that and do something else, and I'm not quite sure that I want to have all these different careers for the rest of my life.
So yeah, I'm really kind of not sure what questions to ask as I kind of interpret, like, okay, how do I narrow in on something and just focus and pursue something? I don't know if that makes any sense whatsoever. - Absolutely. Let's start with the family business. Who started it?
Are there other people in the family involved? How big is it? What's the potential of it? Tell me a little more. - Yeah, so my dad started it in the early '90s. There's about eight people that work there. The business is actually in New Orleans where I'm from. I live in Los Angeles because life kind of brought me out here a few years ago, and I've worked remotely with a lot of travel back and forth for that business.
The potential for growth, there's my parents are partners in the business. We have one other partner, and then myself as a part owner right now. - Do you have other siblings? - I do, yeah. I have two other siblings. One of them works for the company along with his wife.
The third one does something else entirely. - And what's the source of the tension in the family business? Give me some examples. - Yeah, so, without getting too much away on the air, I guess, in case they ever listen to this, just like a bit of tension between myself and my parents.
Whenever I kind of move back to New Orleans and try to invest fully in the business, there's just things that come up about ways that I should live my life and different things like that that kind of create a lot of tension and threats of disownment. And then the business always gets pulled into that as much as we try to separate business and personal issues.
The family issues are more personal, separate from the business, but then we'll be sitting in the office, and if there's a disagreement about business, then all of a sudden personal things get brought up, and it's like, "Wait, that doesn't really have a place here." - Broadly speaking, do you and your parents share similar worldviews, similar philosophies, similar lifestyles, or is there a radical difference there?
- Yes and no. For the most part, they raised me to have kind of the same faith as them, similar worldview, but there are some areas of tension. - Okay, well, let's start with the family business. Financially speaking, almost certainly your best long-term financial opportunity is to get involved in something related to a family business.
Now that kind of commentary would need to always be qualified based upon the specific type or nature of the business, but if you can get involved in a family business where you have an inside track to leadership in the business and you have the knowledge and accumulated experience from people who are trustworthy, you trust them and they trust you, financially speaking, that's probably your best opportunity, 'cause that can cut 10 or 20 years off of your learning curve of starting any other business.
So if you come in at, say, 30 years old and you have a clear pathway to running the business, then that's probably 20 years ahead of where you otherwise would be. So we always wanna prioritize that because it's the fast track. Now simultaneously, there are a whole set of potential downsides of family business.
If the family can't function well together and if there's not a clear sense of shared purpose and vision and a camaraderie and a sense of synergy among you and any other family members that are involved in the business, then it could be a complete source of just wasted time, where you invest years into the business and eventually the family stuff undoes it.
Unfortunately, a lot of that is really not gonna be up to you. A lot of it will be up to your parents. If they're the ones who started the business, they're the ones who nurtured the business, they're the ones who built it, they're the ones who control it. You may own 5% of the business, which means that your voice is completely worthless in actual day-to-day stuff.
And so in order for the family business to really be a good long-term opportunity for you, I think your parents would have to have the vision that they're working very hard to pass the business over to you, and that there's going to be a—to you and to your brother or sister, whoever's involved with you—there's going to be a transition period where they're still calling the shots.
But if they're doing it effectively and they have a vision for getting out, then it can be really great. If they don't have a vision for getting out, then it could just be a complete nightmare for you and you never should get involved in the first place. So you need to engage in an honest assessment.
And I really see that this is one of those—it can be extremely good and it can be extremely bad. And there's probably not so much in the middle. And with what you're describing, it's probably on the road to being extremely bad unless you can present some evidence to yourself that no, mom and dad actually are intentionally wanting to get out of this.
Now I would say that you're at an ideal age to start these conversations. Twenty-two is probably too young for you to be talking—for mom and dad to be talking with you seriously about taking over the family business because you have not been tested. You have not demonstrated your worth and value in the marketplace.
You haven't had enough time to mature and set the course of your life. Thirty? That seems like a pretty good age—30 to 35, 30 to 40. With a kind of an intentional transition period, this would be really good. The challenge is, do your parents have the vision to extricate themselves and to move into the elder senior advisor role, which is going to mean that they have to be willing to turn over responsibility, turn over vision, turn over actual ownership, turn over actual control.
That requires a lot of trust from them. So you need to get some kind of assessment as to see, are we actually going in this direction or not? Do you think it would be comfortable if you fly to New Orleans and you spend a weekend with your parents? Would it be comfortable to just spend hours talking about the future of the business and how they see you being involved in that?
Is that something that could flow smoothly among you? I definitely think it could, yeah. I actually have a trip coming up next week, a regularly scheduled trip to New Orleans there. So I would suggest that this be a standard part of your discussion. What you need to be confident about is, what do your parents actually see?
What's their vision? They may not have thought about it. So I don't think you should be super hasty about any particular decision. If they haven't thought about it and they don't have a vision, okay, fine, well, we'll just start talking about it and it may take a couple of years.
But you need to have confidence that they're actually planning to turn the business over to you and then we got to talk about your sibling and see how that would work out. But it needs to be something that they're working very intentionally towards. It's not the kind of thing that's likely to be three years, but it shouldn't be 20 years and it probably shouldn't even be 10, maybe 10 as the longest, and I'm just kind of making these numbers up.
I'm trying to say that you don't want to arrive yourself at 40 years old and at that point in time find out that, no, mom and dad don't have even the slightest hint of giving up control and you're going to be sitting around until you're 70 when they're finally dead and gone and then you can finally do it.
But by that time you're going to be fighting with your sibling nonstop and it's just going to be a nightmare. It would have been better off for you to go off on your own and build your own thing. So just kind of start those conversations. If you can do that, then financially that would probably be your biggest opportunity.
Now we then have to go to the lifestyle of do you actually like the business? Is this because we don't want something that's soul crushing? But maybe that's just the current job that you're in and maybe it could grow from there. But it's important that you really have confidence that mom and dad, if I can demonstrate my competence and my trustworthiness, mom and dad really want to turn this thing over to me.
If that's there, then you could proceed forward down kind of the pathway in a systematic way. If it's not there and you become convinced it's not there, don't even do it because I've seen this with my own grandfather and his father. My own grandfather lost 15 years of his life because his father needed some work done.
He couldn't run the family business anymore. My grandfather said, "All right, I'll do it." But my great grandfather was never willing and able to give up control. My grandfather could never please his father. He was never able to cross over and gain the respect of his father, even though objectively I don't see any reason that that shouldn't have been obvious.
But my great grandfather was such a control freak and such a terrible manager of human relations and had no vision for kind of what he's actually growing and building in the long run that it robbed my grandfather of a decade and a half of his life. So just be super careful of that because you don't want to lose a decade and a half of your life.
Yeah. I think the thing I'm comparing it to, again, so it would be kind of a total career pivot, which what I've been considering is law school. So while I'm working for my parents and doing these other odd jobs, I have been kind of on the side just studying for the LSAT, about to take it tomorrow, putting together the application package, you know, my practice test, I'm taking it for real, practice tests are coming in like upper 160s, low 170s, so like there could be some opportunity for a good school there and maybe some scholarship opportunity.
But I'm hesitant with the whole idea of, I know I'm only 28, but there's still this kind of sense of like, man, do I start from scratch, do three years of school, grind it out at a firm for a few years before I really start making progress in that career?
I'm in my mid thirties at that point, not quite sure how to gauge all of that. Are you married? Do you have children? No, I'm single. There is someone I would like to move towards marriage with, but yeah, currently single. I would go to law school. No question in my mind about it.
If you're scoring well on the LSAT and you have an interest in it, I think you should go to law school. One of my great regrets for myself is that I didn't go to law school. I may still go in the future, don't cry for me, but in hindsight, I look back on it and I see that my mind is perfectly suited for the legal business and the legal business has so many different expressions of it.
I would encourage you to go to law school. It won't take that long, even if you do go ahead and marry. If you find a woman who's fantastic, go ahead and marry, but you won't regret getting it done and all you got to do is basically get through the first year where it's the most intense, and then you'll be able to go to these other aspects and that will give you an extremely valuable career plan that you can use in so many expressions.
And I would see that as an ideal fit even for your inclinations to Christian ministry, that having the ability to be a self-employed lawyer with even just a modest independent practice that gives you control over yourself, you'd be giving up the highest potential income, but it would give you the foundation to have the flexibility for effective Christian ministry.
And you're never going to be free of effective Christian ministry. You are called to be a minister because you are a Christian man. Now that's different than signing up for a job working for a big church that's going to pay you a big salary, and so finding a balance where you can effectively express your ministry work and also earn income and support your family, and sometimes those things are aligned, sometimes they're not.
To me that would be ideal, but I don't see any reason why you wouldn't prioritize going to law school based upon what you described. And then on the other side of law school, there are lots of new opportunities open to you. There is the legal career, but it's such a phenomenal foundation for so many other aspects of corporate work, business work, that it's just an incredibly flexible and effective course of education.
Well, that's highly encouraging to hear. Yeah. I would say go for it. Before you go too deep, sound out your mom and dad. Get a sense of where they're going. Start talking with your sibling that's in the business. And I would be blunt about it, meaning that there's no reason to pussyfoot around here and like, "Ah, well, I'm not so sure." Clearly, you don't want to overstep your boundaries.
You're not trying to take the business from your mom and dad, but you're trying to get a clear idea of, "Hey, what are you thinking? What's the future for me here?" Because I'm rolling up on 30. There might be a woman out there, I'm thinking about my life, I'd like to understand.
I'm interested in this career, I'm interested in the business, I'm worried about what that would look like, given some of our other questions and other challenges, what are your intentions? I think that if I were talking to your parents, what I would tell them is it's the responsibility of the parental generation to be intentionally, in a very focused way, vacating the seats of leadership and moving into the seats of being an advisor.
It's the same exact model in business as it is as a parent. As a father, in the early years of my children's lives, I'm working really, really hard to control them, to control what they do, to control how they do it, to control how they spend their time. I'm being super, super intentional to control their activities, control their development, all of those things in a very controlling way.
Then as they start to hit double digits in age, then I'm very intentionally pulling back my control, and I'm very intentionally pushing them into situations that are going to continue to stretch them. I want them to be exposed to challenges that they don't quite feel prepared for, I want them to be stretched, I want them to be pushed, I want them to be pushed beyond a little bit of their ability.
Not pushed to the point of being broken, but I want them to fail continually because they're being pushed. And then the goal is, very aggressively, I'm moving them towards independence so that when my children reach adulthood, I am no longer trying to push them in any way. I'm there as an advisor who's ready for them when they ask a question and who's simply focusing on maintaining a good relationship.
And then as adults, I would only step in if I saw a potentially fatal error, just like I would with anybody else. But I'm not going to be in controlling their lives or manipulating them or doing any of those kinds of things. So with a business, it should be a similar pathway, especially if I have children that I'm bringing up in a business.
In the early years, I'm going to really put the yoke on them. I'm going to try to break them, put heavy responsibility, heavy control, this is how we do it. You know, you're going to work your way up from the bottom. There's a reason why some of that's there.
But that's not a 30-year thing. There's a bit of hazing, right, a bit of an apprentice program, a little bit of indentured servitude with some significant challenges. But it's not a long-term thing. It's just a test to see, do you really want it? Do you have the character to get through it?
Think of it like a boot camp of sorts. Why do you go through a boot camp experience in most militaries? Well, part of it is to very quickly convey a whole lot of knowledge and a whole lot of understanding. But a lot of it is to test the person, to see, are you the kind of person who breaks under pressure?
So in a business-wise, we're not doing a boot camp, but you're trying to put on and say, are you the kind of person who breaks under pressure or are you a man of character? Once there's evidence that, no, this guy's a man of character, he can handle it, then they should be pulling that off intentionally.
And then it's a matter of teaching, teaching, teaching, teaching, teaching, raising up to positions of authority and leadership and power, putting responsibility onto the shoulders, and then intentionally moving into a position of being a senior advisor. And so ideally, by the time, if I'm running a family business and my children are taking over, by the time I'm hitting my 50s and 60s, I'm basically out of it and I've turned it over to the children who were in their 30s and 40s.
And by setting that cycle, hopefully, well, I'm still there, I'm still involved, but I'm no longer driving it, then we're raising up maturity. And that's what we need in the next generation. So I see a parallel there, and that's what I think, that's what, in my mind, your parents should be doing.
But in order to do that, they have to be willing to let you fail, they have to be willing to let you make mistakes, and they have to be willing to give up control, which is understandably difficult. For people who have the kind of personality and character to go out and start a family business and then to nurture it into maturity and to deal with all of that, to then intentionally pull back requires a very different mindset than a lot of people have, which is why it fails so many times.
Yeah, that really helps me clarify kind of the question that's in front of me. That's super helpful. Good. I'm glad. Keep in touch, talk with them, and then let's see where things go in the coming months. Daniel in Texas, welcome to the show. How can I serve you today?
Thanks, Joshua. Hope you're having a good day. And you as well. I have a question about franchises for you. Okay. A basic question is, how do you feel about owning a franchise? And a second layer with that is, obviously, numbers matter for a franchise, all that kind of stuff, but in general, but also especially when you bear it in mind against buying an existing business, starting something else from scratch.
I feel very positively inclined towards franchises. And let me just dwell on that for a moment. I was going to do a separate show on this, I'll stick it in here, and who knows whether I do it in the future, but I consider my biggest business mistake that I never understood until literally about probably three years ago was my biggest business mistake in my own life was thinking that the basic element of being a businessman was having a good business idea.
For whatever reason, I always thought, I studied business, I got a degree in business, I wanted to be a businessman, I wanted to be an entrepreneur. And I thought for years and years and years that, okay, that means I need to come up with a good business idea. And so I would spend my time looking for a good business idea.
And even the business that you know of radical personal finance, it was founded on the concept of a good business idea, meaning a style of show, a type of content that would be unique in the marketplace. That was at its core. In hindsight, that was the dumbest, most short-sighted thing I could ever do.
It would have been so much smarter to just simply choose a business that is working and then go do it. And I never even thought of it. And so franchising is kind of a shortcut pathway to choosing a business that's working and going and doing it. So I think that it should be a primary opportunity that many people look into because it is the most direct pathway to having all of the benefits of business ownership.
And it usually doesn't require good luck. It usually doesn't require a unique idea. It simply requires an appropriate concept, an appropriate market to apply that concept to, appropriate financial capacity for the business owner, and appropriate execution on the plan mixed with just a little bit of serendipity with the marketplace.
So I'm hugely in favor of it. Now we can go on to part two. Yeah, I mean, I guess that's with that, if you're taking that, how that compares maybe against as well like a franchise versus buying an existing business. So there, I think it's going to come down to the actual concepts of the specific franchise or franchises that you're interested in, the specific dollar figures involved.
And then alternative businesses. So we can understand the value of a franchise from the franchisor's perspective. I have frequently recommended to people that they franchise their business because it's a great way to get a lot of additional value out of a business, especially in a business that can't quite, that's unlikely to just spread with you running everything and owning everything.
But in the value, the time that can be saved by coming into a business that is structured, that is systematized, and especially if there's a potential for a brand name to be building and sending you business directly from the value of the brand is really, really valuable. On the other hand, it's not a magic thing.
And there's lots of businesses that are well run, that have good business owners there, and they just aren't or weren't the kind of people who are aggressively trying to get every dollar they could possibly get from it. So they just run their business and they're good to go. And you can come in and you can buy them.
And especially in today's world with the retiring baby boom generation, I think that if you can come across one of those, then it's worth doing. It's hard sometimes to come across them because they're often not advertised until the very end when they're with a business broker, whereas franchises are aggressively advertised so they're easier to look at and consider.
Right. Do you have any thoughts on, and obviously each franchise does things a little bit different, do you have any feelings on when it comes to actually the back-end brands, the ongoing royalties and stuff, how much past a certain point is not worth it? I'm going to guess that the answer to that is going to depend on how long the franchise has actually been in business.
So let's assume that you're dealing with a mature franchise. It must be working. Unless there's something about newer contracts versus older contracts, it must be working. One of the things I'm enormously grateful for is just the power of the free market, that in general, the market works all that stuff out for us.
And so in many cases, if you pay what someone's asking, it's probably going to work out. Think of this like when you go to sell a car or sell a house or something like that. The very first thing that you do, if you're going to sell a car or a boat that you have, is you go to the marketplace and you kind of get a sense of what is happening in the marketplace.
And you get a sense of kind of this is the market number. Then you look at your actual product and you say, "Well, is my car extra shiny? Is it in extra good condition? Well, if so, then I'll go ahead and mark it up at a premium." And then you look at your motivation.
Do I really need to sell quickly? Well, let me mark it down a little bit. But in your own business, you generally look to the marketplace first, so the marketplace keeps prices consistent. Now it's no different when selling a business that you're going to go to the marketplace and you're going to look at your competitors and you understand that if you're selling a franchise, you're in competition with all the other franchisors, all the other offerings that are out there.
So you're probably going to choose a fair price. And if some bozo walked in off the street, took your contract the way that you offered it, signed it with no negotiation, it's probably good enough. Now, should you negotiate? Should you push? Yeah. And should you inform yourself and look at other competitors?
Of course, because we need to make sure that we're not dealing with a scammer. But I think the biggest danger would just be, "Am I franchisee number three?" Well, if I'm franchisee number three, then there's just not a lot of experience that we have to know that this model really works.
But beyond that, I think that whatever they're asking is probably going to be competitive with other options that are out there. Okay. Cool. That's all I needed to know. Thank you, sir. Yeah. My pleasure. All right. We move on to Nick in New York. Welcome to the show, Nick.
How can I serve you today? Hi, Joshua. Can you hear me? Sounds good. Yes. So my high-level question is how much do you push your children to study a topic that you think is good for them, but they're not necessarily naturally attracted to? And so the details of this is that I have two kids, and my daughter is eight years old.
She's very smart. I think my biased opinion, but she's very sort of classically smart, right? So she's very much into reading classical novels. She has developed a vocabulary that's much richer than other kids of the same age. And pretty much if you give her free time, what she'll do is she'll just start reading a book.
Now she's reading world record Guinness books, but sort of interesting books to her. About two years ago, I realized that at school she was struggling a little bit with math. And so at the time I decided to start working with her. She goes to public school. So I decided to start working with her, and we started doing Life of Fred.
And we pretty much covered all the gaps that she had, and we went further ahead. So she's, in theory, she could deal with, let's say third grade and fourth grade material at the moment, even though she's starting third grade this fall. Now all of that said, she's not naturally attracted to math.
So she would do it if I told her to, right, because she's just very obedient. She was very excited when we were doing Life of Fred, but in hindsight, I realized that she was excited because of the story aspect of Life of Fred, rather than because she was very excited about the math itself.
And I am sort of, in my social circle is a high achievement circle. So parents are sending their kids to Sunday math school, and they're participating international math competitions. They're teaching their kids, similar age, how to touch type. And so I'm vacillating between making sure that she's, quote unquote, ahead of her peers and ahead of public school and spending time with her, versus allowing her to just develop the way that she would naturally develop, where it seems, again, that she's more of this classical woman interested in novels and that kind of thing.
People, not things and concepts. Correct. Correct. So, and that's where I am, right? She's eight years old, and I don't know if it's sort of, she's still young enough where I should say, no, come and study with me. I want to make sure that you do this or whether I start making sure that she's okay at school, but letting her spend the time where her talents seem to lay.
Right. Right. It's a good question. And I'm not going to give you any kind of clear, specific answer because you're going to test different ideas, different concepts, and see what's working at this particular point in time. So let me just begin with some big picture philosophies. Philosophy number one is that in general, I think most of us are better off leaning into our strengths and really developing our strengths to a very high level versus trying to spend all of our time on our weaknesses.
So putting this in a scholastic perspective, let's imagine that your eight-year-old daughter loves nothing but novels, and she reads and she reads and she reads and she reads. And you encourage her in that classical direction. Many times, somebody who is a committed reader will naturally become a committed writer.
If she goes on and develops that and spends her teenage years and adolescent years writing and publishing novels, and she arrives at the age of 18 and she's looking out at the world and she's published five or six novels of her own and sold some thousands of copies of them, she will be highly sought after as a student to the most prestigious and exclusive colleges.
She'll have lots of pathways that are open to her because she's very strong in a particular area. Now let's pretend that instead of doing that, you say, "No, I'm going to cut back on the reading and I'm going to put in math, and we're just going to do math." And let's assume that she scrapes in and she does AP Calculus in her senior year of high school, and she scrapes in by the skin of her teeth and gets a three on the AP Calculus AB exam.
That doesn't help her in any way because she's not a standout person. She doesn't have any particular area of strong expertise. Yes, she learned calculus, but there's a decent chance that her path would be like mine. I couldn't even begin to talk about calculus or do calculus anymore. I did calculus and I forgot it all immediately after being done with it, then boom, done.
So if you had to choose between focusing on encouraging strengths and areas of standout genius versus shoring up weaknesses, I think we're far better off focusing on strengths. That's philosophy number one. Philosophy number two is this. I don't think that there's anybody who's really incapable of performing at a genius level if there's sufficient levels of interest.
So last year, and I never did do kind of like a summation podcast of everything that I learned, but I spent a lot of time last year, or I guess maybe early this year, digging into the concepts of genius and tried to review and understand what people talk about.
And in essence, if you look at the world's genius performers, at least in what are sometimes called friendly learning environments, if you look at world genius performers, it's something that can be nurtured but not forced. So let's use musicians as an example. World-class musicians tend to be the children of musicians.
And if you listen to the stories of the world-class genius musicians, they get an early start on the development of their genius because they were raised in a musical environment. Their parents had instruments, their parents valued playing instruments, and their parents invested into them learning and practicing music, so they got an early start.
But there has to come a point in time in order to become a true genius where the young person or the child has to make a conscious choice for herself to say, "I am going to do this. This I want." And it has to be an internally directed, self-motivated thing.
If you're going to sit and you're going to practice your violin for seven hours a day and do the kind of intentional, focused practice that's going to lead to your truly becoming world-class, it can't be forced on you externally. And so the child who's going to become a world-class mathematician is going to have to cross over and be self-motivated.
You can't force your daughter. Even though I don't think that there's any math, I doubt that there's any particular kind of math gene or any kind of natural mathematical ability. People think there is, but I just see so many stories of people who when they're in school, they, "Oh, I'm not good at math." And then they're 33 years old and all of a sudden they just start, they take an interest in math and they're like, "I love math.
This is great." And I think that not being good at math is much more likely due to poor teaching methodology and inadequate tutoring, inadequate teaching, unattractive presentation styles than it is that there's any genetic ability with math or any kind of natural ability that is expressed in mathematics. But in order for your daughter to go and become a mathematician, she would have to encounter a spark, something that actually so intrigued her that she wanted to do it.
That's what world-level, world-class genius depends upon. So that's my philosophy number two, is that we want to try to expose our children to a broad array of things and we want them to be competent. Your daughter's going to have an easier time if she's competent with math. So how do you reconcile these things?
I would say you reconcile it by requiring a basic level of performance in everything that's important to you without it becoming overwhelming. So you're going to require your daughter to be good at math. And I don't think that there's any reason why she's not going to be good at math, especially with the fact that you are tutoring her.
If you look at the standard math pathway in your local public school where your daughter's enrolled, there is no reason she can't get straight As at math. That pathway has to accommodate children who never do homework, whose parents have no interest whatsoever, who are years behind where everyone else should be.
So what I have noticed is that if we emphasize consistency and small doses of study on a consistent basis as compared to large doses of extreme effort, then we can significantly outperform our peers without it being totally overwhelming. So in the mathematical example, you might say, "When school's in session, I'm just going to make sure that she's doing the math work that is being assigned in her schoolwork.
But when school's out of session, we're going to do 30 minutes a day of math." And it may be Life of Fred, it may be Math Academy, it may be Khan Academy, but you just find your own kind of supplemental program. And then what I would also do is I would try to insert ideas that are going to be helpful to her.
So instead of just always doing drill and kill math, then emphasize the narrative benefits of math. Put in living math books, keep on doing Life of Fred. And if your daughter is doing that and doing it consistently, then she's going to be outperforming in the fullness of time, but you're not going to be hindering her development of genius.
And then the final thing I would say is I don't think it's wrong or dumb to require certain things of our children. I think it's good and healthy, but we want to make sure that our requirements are not onerous. So requiring your daughter to sit down and do 20 minutes of math every day seems totally reasonable to me and very unlikely to poison her against mathematics.
Requiring her to sit down and do two hours of math every day when she doesn't really like it, is not really interested in it, that might be a little bit too extreme and is likely to turn her off and make her despise the subject. So finding that individual balance to me would be the strategy to look for.
Yeah, that's a good idea. That's also me. I don't like pressuring people to do things that they don't want to do. And so when I sensed that she wasn't interested anymore, we did do Life of Fred twice, the books that are appropriate for her age and a bit older.
But then again, because she was looking at the story, the story was no longer novel. So she lost interest. I don't know if you know of any other books or websites that are, as you said, narrative based math. I think Life of Fred is the best. I have a complete Life of Fred collection from apples all the way up through trigonometry.
The only one I haven't gotten yet is calculus. So that tells you how much I care about it. I have purchased, I'm building a collection of every single book that Stanley Schmidt has written. So I think it is the best. And the neat thing about Life of Fred, I assign it to my children in addition to another math curriculum.
So I use two math curricula. And Life of Fred generally is about, most lessons seem to be about 15 or 20 minutes. And they're very, very doable, at least we're in the, I mean, my eldest is doing the beginner's algebra book now. And still it's about 17 minutes, 20 minutes, something like that for him to work through the lesson, do the problems and be done with it.
So I think that would be my number one recommendation to you. - Right, what is the second book or set of books that you're doing? - So you're gonna go, yeah, so the pathway goes, you start with apples and then you think you go through goldfish or ice cream or something like that.
Maybe it's ice cream. And that's the elementary. Then you go to kidney, liver and mind shaft, and hopefully this is piquing the interest of somebody. That's the middle school math is kidney, liver and mind shaft. Then after that, you go into the decimals book and fractions. Then after that, you go into the pre-algebra book.
And then there's pre-algebra zero with economics, pre-algebra one with physics and pre-algebra two with chemistry. And that takes a child all the way through pre-algebra, which would be about normally in the US system, eighth grade math. Then you go into the high school series and so then it's beginning algebra one, advanced algebra two, geometry and trigonometry.
And then from there into calculus and then into the advanced college math books. He takes it all the way through a four-year undergraduate degree of mathematics. So what you're looking for is if you've done the A through I or whatever it is, then you need to get kidney, liver and mind shaft.
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Again, I don't know. So that his point is that children's brains may not be ready for something. And by trying to shoehorn them into that something, then as you said earlier, you can sort of poison them. - So I think you just test it. So this is something I've tested myself and am testing.
I heard various people say, both Schmidt himself and a couple of other math teachers that I listen to, is they make a big point to say, don't do conceptual math too early. So first of all, I would say conceptual math would start at about algebra. Even pre-algebra is not particularly conceptual.
But so you can certainly go into the middle years of kidney, liver and mind shaft before needing to go farther. But I tested it and I'm open to stopping, but I haven't seen that there's been any reason to stop. So just for context, my almost 11 year old is doing algebra now and I haven't observed any problem with it.
So I simultaneously totally agree with the ideas that we should be careful. I think we should be cautious of workbook math too early. I think it's perfectly reasonable to not start any formal mathematics even until 10 or 11 and start in like fifth grade. But I do think you should look at your actual daughter and see, and if she's not overwhelmed by it, then just keep going.
And then recognize that that's the power of narrative, is that you don't have to get every problem right. The stories will start to help to convey the concepts. And if she goes through it once and it's a little bit too advanced, but she comes back two years later, then it'll be easy for her and that's the benefit.
So we should go at the level that the child is capable of going and not unnecessarily hold her back nor unnecessarily push her too strong. Got it. All right. Thank you very much Joshua. Let me just add one more thing. I use myself as a meter. I have a daughter that is just older than yours and I have basically a complaining meter that I use.
And so my daughter has everything that I present to her ever, she complains about it incessantly before we even start. So I'm pretty immune to complaining, but I also listen to how much there is. And we usually go through phases. So I'll just use languages. When I introduced my daughter to Spanish, well it was French, I introduced her to French and she hated every minute of it and complained nonstop.
So I did it in little bites here and there. And then as the complaining became less, then I increased the load a little bit. Well, today she loves French, says French is her favorite lesson, French is her favorite subject. So if she could just do nothing but French, that would just be happy, that would make her happy.
It's like, why do we have to do anything today except French? And there was just a year ago where she just complained nonstop and never wanted to do anything with French. So I listened to the complaints and then I vary the amount of work based upon it. So similarly, then after French, I moved on to German.
I said, okay, let's start German. Complain, complain, complain. I adjusted the content a little bit, complain, complain, complain. And then I kind of tested a little bit and I realized, yeah, we're not making progress here. So I went way back, stopped with the advanced stuff, went back to the beginning, built it up, and all the complaining dialed back to just a little bit of complaining.
And what I'm looking for with knowing her is I just want just a little bit of complaining, but I know I'm just going to press it forward. And then pretty soon the complaining starts to disappear and then we ramp it up. So that's an actual example, but that's, I think, what you're looking for, is you're not looking for tears.
You don't want tears. But a little bit of complaining is a good metric to see where, okay, we're actually making progress here. This is hard. I don't love it. Okay, good. We're right at the right area. So then just swap in and out different things and use that kind of complaining meter to assess how you're doing and where you should be focused.
- Makes sense. Thank you. - Yep. My pleasure. All right, we go on to Timothy in Virginia. Welcome, Timothy. How can I serve you today? All right. Timothy is gone. All right. Let me pivot here. Since Timothy dropped off, wait a second and see if he pops back on.
Let me read you a couple of written questions prepared. The first written question or the first written is a comment that actually came in from a listener in response to my recent episode on Child Protective Services. So a listener writes in and says, "Joshua, I just listened to your recent episode on how to protect yourself during a CPS investigation, Child Protective Services.
This episode resonated with me because a few years ago, my family was investigated several times by CPS over the course of about 18 months. It was one of the most difficult personal trials we've ever faced and it nearly tore our family apart. But thanks to God's divine intervention and the wisdom of some very good attorneys, we were able to successfully convince CPS to close their case.
Without going into any details of our case to maintain confidentiality, I'd like to share a few aspects of my experience that listeners should be aware of that were not mentioned in the episode. First and most important, in most states, there is a mandated reporter legislation that requires teachers, daycare workers, church staff, camp counselors, or anyone who interacts with children daily to report any suspected abuse to CPS.
Any bump, bruise, or scratch on your child could be interpreted by a teacher as suspected abuse, including minor injuries young children often sustain during normal play. Secondly, in each case that was filed, the social worker interviewed my children at their school prior to interviewing us, without our knowledge or consent.
When they knocked on our door, they already had the testimony of our children as evidence against us. My attorney informed me this is legal and standard practice in my state. Thirdly, CPS reports are public records, and you have the right to obtain them as part of your legal defense strategy.
And lastly, CPS does serve the public good by protecting children experiencing abuse. As I got to know the caseworkers, I began to appreciate how hard they work to ensure the well-being of children who have no one to look out for them at home. It's a very tough job. Whether or not you are being investigated for just cause, they deserve your respect and appreciation.
It's important to know that once you are under the gaze of CPS, it is highly likely that you will face multiple investigations. To that end, I highly recommend installing surveillance cameras throughout your home. This is something I did after the first CPS investigation, and from that point onward, I was able to provide video evidence to the caseworker for each incident.
I'm convinced this contributed significantly to ending their case. We are doing much better today as a family, and we are so thankful. There's more I could share about my story, but I prefer to keep that private. I will say this. You are absolutely right that CPS operates under a totally different legal structure than the police.
You really are guilty until proven innocent. You need a good family law attorney, and you need to be cooperative and respectful to the caseworkers. Thanks again for posting such a good episode. Would you be willing to share this message with others? So this is a good email and a good outline.
I want to go through and just add a couple of comments to this. I should have included, I thought about it, I was trying to decide how extensive to make the outline. For the first two points, it is really important, so I want to emphasize them. First, on the concept of a mandated reporter, this indeed is the fact.
You should assume that any person who is employed in some kind of capacity interacting with children is a mandated reporter. So I would say the obvious ones are healthcare professionals, doctors, nurses, psychiatrists, anybody like that, all educators, teachers, school counselors, daycare administrators, and then other clergy, usually a mandated reporter, so pastors and priests and rabbis, usually public servants, law enforcement, public safety officers.
There might be other people, coaches, lawyers, things like that. These are the types of occupations that are mandated reporters. So if this mandated reporter sees or observes anything that could be construed as abuse of any kind, then he or she legally is obligated to report it to the appropriate government officials.
And it's important that you know this. And just from a defensive strategy perspective, it's important that you understand that if, for example, let's say your child falls down, if you have children, and especially if you have boys, and if you allow your children to be boys, there's a decent chance that generally, normally, there's going to be bumps, bruises, cuts, lacerations, scrapes, things like that.
So if any of that is obvious, for example, on the face, you need to make certain that your child very clearly remembers what happened, happens, and that you say it. So if your child fell down on his bicycle or fell out of a tree and scraped his face up, then you need to make certain that when you take your child to school, that your child tells the teacher, "I fell down and scraped my face." Obviously, the mandated reporter is going to ask and give a chance to talk about it, but it's important to understand where injuries come from.
And normally speaking, if there's a perfectly normal and ordinary explanation for an injury, then that can minimize the risk of filing a report. It is also important to have documentation of certain things. So let's say one of your children gets injured, and you seek medical help, then it's important to make certain that you document with the physician, and ideally with your notes and everything, exactly what happened.
Because sometimes things might come back years later, and it's important that you have those written records and that the people involved, that there's contemporaneous evidence of what actually happened. Think of it like a court case. If you've ever watched an actual court case, I watched the Johnny Depp Amber Heard trial, much of it, when that was happening a couple years ago, and I found it so fascinating to just look at the importance of contemporaneous documentation, that if so-and-so was injured, then so-and-so went to the doctor, and in the doctor's notes, we can find this assessment.
We can find this clear evidence that was taken by the physician. And so think about that and make certain that if there's an injury, that you document the injury in some way yourself, that you make records and contemporaneous records of it, in addition to, if you seek medical care, that the reason for the injury is documented and understood.
And if there's been some kind of weird thing happening, let's say that your child had a weird bruise, fell down and smacked his face on a rock and is bruised in some way that would be the kind of bruising that an abusive adult would cause, if an adult were abusing the child, then document it properly and just be aware of the fact that there are mandated reporters who, if they see that continually, will step in, as they should.
I think that those kinds of laws are appropriate, but you need to be aware of them. The next point that the listener writes about is the fact that the social worker interviewed the children at their school without speaking to the parents. This is indeed legal and it is common.
It's legal and common. And I thought about talking about this, but I wasn't sure what to say about it, again, because we're kind of walking this fine line where I want abusive people, abusive adults to be found, to be caught, and to be prosecuted, and I want children to be put in safe situations.
So I thought, you know, what do you do? First of all, if you've done nothing wrong and are doing nothing wrong with your children, then probably there's no harm to the interview in the first place. When you're dealing with a normal situation and a normal child and something that has happened that has caused something to happen, then generally the explanation should make sense.
I'm thinking here of an example where one of my boys fell out of a tree, fell out of a tree, fell on a rock underneath the tree. The rock hit his stomach, knocked the wind out of him, and caused him to experience a lot of pain and have bruising.
Took him to the doctor, had a full checkup done, and go back to documentation, and, you know, we document, okay, here's the tree, here's the rock, here's where he fell from. Go to the doctor, explain, fell out of a tree, you know, about this high as best we can figure out.
Here's what happened. You know, it's documented. If somebody, if in a normal situation, somebody came along and asked the child what happened, I fell out of a tree is a pretty obvious thing that wouldn't cause any harm. Where I most worry about interviews is when children are very young or if children have diminished capacity and don't have the ability to, don't have the ability to clearly understand what is happening.
So here is a paragraph, I don't, I can't remember if I read this in the other one, but from Defending the Innocent for Child Protective Services, "The charges are going to dictate what steps to take next. Depending on the severity of the charges, this will dictate what you can and should do.
If the allegations include direct harm to a child, assault, neglect, you will have to let them," them being CPS, "see the child. This does not mean that you have to allow CPS into your house. Have them meet with the child on the front step briefly and in your presence and be sure to record the discussion.
Inform CPS that the meeting is being recorded. Do not allow CPS to talk with the child alone, ever. Child Protective Services will be able to make up evidence they need from the child's testimony and you will have no defense against it. Children do not testify in court and the words they use are taken at face value, even though you can explain it.
That evidence will be used against you. An example would be if they took the child to the car and asked, "Has mommy or daddy ever put something in your behind?" The child will answer, "Yes." "What was it?" will be the next question. And of course the answer will be, "I don't know." Now you're losing your son and facing 15 years in prison because you used a rectal thermometer on a three-year-old and the child couldn't explain you were taking his temperature.
So that's an example of the kind of miscommunications that can happen in an interview. So how do you handle this? Well, first, I think you just try to explain what's happening and talk to your children as best you can and explain what's happening. I don't think that in general it's appropriate to try to make specific, you know, to talk on and on about, "Well, here's what you do if you talk to a CPS agent," or something like that, unless you had a specific cause for concern.
So the example that I used was homeschooling. I know many people that homeschool in, I know some people who homeschool in countries where homeschooling is illegal. They know that they are breaking the law. They're breaking the law because the law is immoral and their conscience is clear doing it.
But because they know that they're doing something that is illegal, they have to take extra measures to instruct their children on how to keep their children out of problem and out of trouble. So the parent will coach the child. If you're interacting with somebody who's asking you these kinds of questions, this is what you say.
And so you give these answers and nothing more, and you don't talk to the person anymore about this subject. I think that's appropriate and an appropriate amount of defense if you have a particular reason why you yourself might be being targeted in a culture where you face an adversarial government.
In general, it seems that it's more important just simply to make it understood about how to deal with people in general, and that that would be the appropriate way to go about it. So there are a lot of predators in the world, and an immoral CPS agent who is pursuing a false case is only one of those predators.
So I think it's most important that we teach children, generally speaking, to avoid predators, and we teach them the specific tools and techniques of avoiding predators. One of my big concerns is that our society has decided that for whatever reason, parents, especially parents who have their children in government schools, should expect that unknown strangers are going to talk to their children about matters including sex and sexuality.
This is flat-out evil. It is absolutely evil that some stranger would come and talk to your child about matters relating to sex and sexuality. I'm much more concerned about that than I am about CPS. So I think it's appropriate that we teach our children that these are the conversations that you have with other people, these are the conversations you don't, similar to how we have a responsibility to teach our children to have complete and total control and autonomy over their bodies, to say, "Nobody touches you without your permission.
These are the behaviors and the things that people can't do to you. People can't remove your clothes. People can't touch you on your body here. These are the people who are allowed to touch you." And so the appropriate way to do it is meeting mom or dad or a physician if we're in a doctor's office and mom or dad is with you.
And so being very proactive about teaching our children about abuse and teaching them about appropriate conversation boundaries, teaching them to avoid one-on-one conversations, I think is more important to protect them from the predators they're likely to face with teachers or administrators or other perverts that they're surrounded by rather than just worrying about CPS, but it naturally extends to that.
I worry a little bit about how to do this well. I don't know how to do it well. I hate, for example, with the police conversations. I wish we could go back to an era in which I could tell children, "Hey, if you're in trouble, go and find the policeman." I still want them to look for a policeman when a child is facing trouble.
But I also have to teach them to be careful and teach them how to not talk to the police in an appropriate circumstance. So it's difficult. I don't have perfect understanding of it. But I think in general, we should teach our children, you don't have private conversations with people about really almost any, there's no reason for you to have private conversations with other people.
When people start asking personal questions, personal questions about the family, that's an appropriate time to say, "I'll be happy to answer your questions when my mommy or daddy is with me." And I think in general, that's a good rule that is going to properly protect appropriate parents from legal risks of rogue government agents without endangering children who are genuinely in danger.
I really hate to try to insert uncertainty into a child's mind, but realistically, children are surrounded by lots of danger. And so we need to appropriately teach them about the danger without inappropriately creating fear. And the best pathway I know to do that is to do it very intentionally.
As parents, it's our responsibility to have children teach them about boundaries for their bodies, teach them about boundaries for conversations, teach them about the types of tools and tactics that perverts will use to try to engage with them, and then to answer their questions very honestly so that they're not out talking to strangers about things that strangers have no business being involved in.
The next comment that the listener mentioned about was talking about the idea that, talking about getting the CPS reports and then putting cameras in place. And that seems like a great idea. I didn't think about that, but absolutely, I think that's a great idea. And what I understood here from the email is that this listener put cameras inside the house, certainly not in private areas, I would assume, but within the public areas inside the house.
And so there was documentation of what was happening and what is happening inside of the house. And so given the fact that a CPS investigation is probably a longer-term thing, and in this case it was multiple investigations, if you do have a reason for heightened concern, then putting in place a proactive strategy to create evidence that could be used in your defense is a smart idea.
I hope I've struck an appropriate tone with this. I don't want to strike a paranoid tone because I'm not paranoid and I don't think we should be paranoid, but we need to be cautious. And so the main thing I wanted you to be aware of is exactly what this listener said and exactly what I said in that show, that when dealing with CPS, you are guilty until proven innocent.
So you will need to present the appropriate evidence to resolve the case. So think about that and at least be aware of that. So if CPS knocks on your door and you deal with that agent differently than how you would deal with an FBI agent knocking at your door, with an FBI agent knocking on your door, the answer is, "Hello, sir, why are you here?
And can I have a business card? And I don't answer questions, I'm sorry, I understand you're doing your job and it's just an investigation, it's just a few questions, I don't answer questions, thank you very much." And then you would immediately contact a lawyer and you would only ever speak with the FBI in the presence of a lawyer, and you would only answer questions with that safeguard and only answer what you're legally compelled to answer.
That is not what you do when CPS is at your door. If CPS is at your door, you need to answer enough questions to diffuse the situation. I don't know the level of corruption of CPS in your country, but for good conversation, let's assume that it exists but is low.
So you want to give good answers, but not violate any of those things that I said, and then quickly get a lawyer to help you through the process. Remember, the truth is always your best defense. Don't abuse your children. Protect your children from anybody who would abuse them. This is your responsibility.
I care much more about that than I do care about CPS. So you need to be a lion protecting your children against perverts and people who would abuse your children and would prey on them. Teach your children self-defense. Teach your children to trust their fear. I always go back to Gavin DeBecker's book called "The Gift of Fear," a good book for you to read, and teach your children to respect their perspectives.
Teach them to defend themselves. I'm not just talking about punching, but having noisemakers and teaching them to talk to people. Teach your children what to do if somebody tries to tell your children about a secret. So your children should be trained that if so-and-so comes and says, "Hey, let's keep this a secret," that's an immediate time to go and talk to mommy and daddy, because that concept of secrecy has been abused over the years by many abusers.
Teach your children to deal with shame appropriately, not to hide it, but to confess it and speak to you about intimate, difficult things so that you can protect them from the predators and the perverts that surround them today. All right. Going on to a question from a listener. "Hey, Joshua.
I seem to have terrible luck with being available for your Q&A times. I'll chat again soon." I did have one question for the show, if you're able to work it in. "My partner and I have been receiving a little less than $200,000 a year for about three years now for the sale of our business.
We provided owner financing, and that note will pay off at the end of this year. Prior to that, we ran the business and basically just drew whatever we wanted out of it when we needed cash. Since the sale, we have basically been funding our life with the money that comes in and keeping our salaries completely separate.
We maintain a joint account for bill pays and things like that, but have historically kept our savings separate. We're in our mid-30s. Net worth together is just over $2 million, and I earn about $200,000 full-time, and my partner earns $120,000 part-time. My question is, how would you recommend managing finances after the payments stop?
And now that we do not enjoy a big cash slush fund from a profitable company that we ran, we've gotten pretty sloppy about doing things like budgeting or planning. We'd be curious if you have any thoughts on how to transition into a more structured expense and budgeting system after not doing that for more than 10 years." So great question, and I do.
So very specifically, you don't need to budget so much as you need to put controls in place to make certain that you never overspend your income. So what would be an example of a perfect set of controls for you to put in place? Well, you would take your income, which would be your paychecks.
When you receive your paycheck on Friday, you would take it down to the bank. You would cash that paycheck. You would put all of that physical cash in your pocket, and you would spend that. And if you needed to buy something, you would spend it out of the physical currency that's in your wallet.
And if you ran out of currency in your wallet, you would stop buying things. That would be the perfect set of controls. Now obviously, none of us do that. No one does that in today's world, but we should. And if we're going to try to build a system, we want to get as close to that as possible.
And the point here is that budgeting is not so important as it is not overspending. That's the basic thing. And what people often think of when it comes to budgeting is they often think of some form of tracking. Well, tracking is nice, but tracking is historic. Tracking means you can look back at the end of the month and you can figure out what you spent money on last month.
That's less important than proactive controls. So the idea of budgeting is that you're going to sit down, you're going to figure out how much money is going to come in next month, you're going to put it all into various categories and buckets, and then you're going to take those categories and buckets and you're going to spend money out of them.
But a lot of times this doesn't happen for most people because they just simply do too much. They've got too many things. Who wants to sit around and categorize expenses? Now you can use various software systems and things that help you make your buckets fancier and automatically categorize your transactions.
I think that that's nice, but unnecessary. What is the most necessary is that you not overspend. So let me explain to you how you do that. Since you're not going to do the cash thing, you need to do the digital equivalent of that, which is to put your money into an account, a bank account, and then spend your money from that account.
The first thing that you want to avoid is the use of a credit card. Why? Well, because a credit card makes it possible and easy for you to overspend by accident. You just kind of accidentally spend a little bit more than you intended to, and now you have to pay back thousands of dollars more to the credit card bill.
There are good reasons to use a credit card. The most important one being the point of sale protection that you get for unauthorized expenses and fraud by using a credit card as compared to a debit card. That protection is useful and valuable. The problem with a debit card is not necessarily that you won't get your money back.
Generally, your debit card issuer gives you good protections against fraud, but that your bank account might be wiped out in the meantime, whereas with a credit card, you can go back and settle things and deal with it. But I think you can fix this electronically and get rid of the risk of overspending.
So what I teach people to do is to set up a system, usually that involves at least two checking accounts, and one checking account is your bills-paying checking account. Another checking account is your spending checking account. So imagine this. You have a paycheck that comes in. There's $15,000 in the paycheck.
You take off the top the amount of money that you're going to save, go ahead and set aside whatever percent. Let's say you set aside $3,000 of it. That gets automatically put to savings, and you're left with $12,000. The $12,000 goes into checking account A. Checking account A is the account that you have your automatic bill pay set up.
So all of your bills automatically draft to that checking account. Then you're going to take whatever's left over. Let's say you had $4,000 of bills, and you're left with $8,000. So now you take $8,000 and make a transfer to checking account B. Checking account B is the card that you spend money from based upon your actual point-of-sale transactions.
And the idea is I want you to be able to pop open an app on your phone, look in your checking account, see how much money is in there, and then if there's money in there, go ahead and spend it. If there's not money in there, then stop spending money.
And I want your card to bounce if you try to spend money that you don't have in there. And if you do that and just maintain a little buffer there, and you just say, "I never spend below $3,000," then pretty well you've solved the problem, and you've guaranteed that I'm not going to overspend, because I did my savings, and I just put the money from my income into the account.
I'm not going to overspend. And then if you're just dealing with a small checking account that's just for expenses, then I think we can pretty well get rid of the worries about point-of-sale risk of a debit card versus a credit card. You're always going to run it as a credit card.
Don't put your pin in. You're just going to run it as a credit card. And if somebody wiped out your account, well, you just lost your spending money until you can replenish it. That's a very low risk as compared to the much higher risk of you just overspending because you always use a credit card.
So don't use credit cards. Don't spend on them. Too easy to overspend. Spend on a debit card that has a spending account associated with it, and then just skip the budgeting. If you're not into budgeting, skip it. But if you do that system that I described, you won't ever overspend, and you will basically have accomplished the goal of budgeting.
You covered your bills with planning them out in advance, and all of your point-of-sale spending, the stuff that you do spontaneously, is all done with a card. And then finally, whenever possible, use Apple Pay or Google Pay instead of actually running the actual card because that additionally helps to protect you from fraud.
So that would be my suggestion for you. The idea being don't try to force yourself to be someone you're not. If you're not the kind of guy who sits around and makes spreadsheets for fun, don't try to become the kind of guy who's going to make spreadsheets and just force himself to do it.
You want to be the kind of guy instead who puts in place a simple system that protects him against overspending. That's it for today's Friday Q&A show. Thank you for listening. If you'd like to join me on next week's show, remember you can do that by going to patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance.
Patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance. Sign up to support the show on Patreon, and that will gain access for you to one of these Friday Q&A shows. Have a great weekend, and I'll be back with you very soon. Find a store near you.