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Ralphs. Fresh for everyone. ♪ Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now, while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less. My name is Joshua. I am your host.

And no, I am not dead. No, I am not sick. And no, we did not fall off of a mountain. So thank you for your concern. I have been busy the last couple of weeks putting the finishing touches on a new course that I'm launching to you on Monday.

A course on credit cards. The title is "How to Borrow Money Safely and Never Pay Interest Using Credit Cards." And as with many of my projects, I find that my creativity is about five times bigger than my ability to actually implement anything. And everything takes about five times longer than I think it should.

So the projects that I schedule a couple of weeks for, well, in this case, it's wound up being two months. And the problem's exacerbated by all kinds of various things. But it is almost entirely ready, and it will be fully ready by Monday. And so in today's show, I'm going to give you just some thoughts and some ideas that I think you'll really find interesting.

And part of this will be to help get your mind thinking about the subject of credit cards, hopefully in some ways that are unique. Over the next couple of weeks, I'll be dripping out some information for you, a couple of audio excerpts from the course, etc., to incentivize you to buy it.

There'll be a discount period, which will save you some money. And I hope that this course that I've prepared will really serve you effectively in something that's unique. And I believe that it will have a wide appeal for a number of reasons. First, this will help you if you are currently in debt.

If you owe any money of any kind, this particular course will help you. Because I'll help you develop the strategies to borrow money safely and not pay interest with credit cards. Which means, and I think you should give serious thought to even refinancing some of your debt using some of the strategies that I will outline for you in the course.

But if you're not in debt, this course will help you to make sure that if you ever are in debt in the future, you've set up the infrastructure to make sure that you borrow money safely and never pay interest. And also, if you are wealthy, you're not in debt, you're never going to be in debt, then I think some of the ideas that I present in this course will help you to help others who are in debt.

Because this particular project of mine has come from a place of experience, my own personal experience, the lessons that I have learned, and also a place of concern, because I get sick and tired of seeing people abused by the credit card system. And usually, the people who can least afford to be abused are the ones who are the most frequently abused.

And I don't like that. I would like to see those of us who are in a strong place help the people who are frequently and often abused by the systems that are out there. And many people have a very tough situation with credit cards. Well, I think a lot of this can be avoided.

And I want to give you some strategies and ideas that will help you to avoid these problems for you. So also, real quick, as I begin today's show, I've also published an announcement. I'm hosting a special Q&A call specifically on the subject of credit cards. If you currently have credit cards, if you have credit card debt, if you have any questions about credit cards, if you want to discuss any aspect of credit cards, I would love for you to join me for the call-in show on Friday, October 5.

I have published a separate audio file with the call-in details of that. But please join me for that call-in show. I would love to speak to you there. Now, let's talk about credit cards. We need to begin, of course, with the obvious discussion of debt. Debt is a very fraught subject.

And there are a lot of strong feelings. And usually, this subject of debt and credit cards is one of the more divisive arguments in personal finance. And people often take a couple of extreme perspectives. And almost everybody agrees on the idea that you shouldn't be in credit card debt.

Now, of course, reality, the actual data that exists on the number of people that are in credit card debt, shows that that argument might be common in the personal finance world. But in general, many people have credit card debt. I actually don't even hold to that position. My position is that credit card debt is actually some of the safest and lowest cost debt when compared to other options.

And in a moment, I'll give you examples as to why I would say that. But many people would say, "Well, credit card debt is the worst form of debt. I don't buy it. I just don't see the evidence for that." I think that credit card debt is potentially very dangerous.

It can be very risky, depending on how we measure this term "risky." But it also can be extremely safe, depending on how we measure the term "safe." If I were to ever go into debt in the future, one of my primary choices would be to use credit card debt as my financing source versus other forms of debt.

And I'll explain in the audio today and in forthcoming episodes, little excerpts from the course that I'll share with you, I'll explain to you why. And I'll stand behind that. Not in an absolute sense, not that credit card debt is always the first form of debt. But when considering all the different forms of financing that are available, I think credit card financing is a really compelling form of financing, if you have the right infrastructure in place and if you know what you are doing.

So let's begin. So I don't take that extreme position, even though that's the normally agreed upon discussion of credit cards. Now, there are other discussions on credit cards. For example, many people say, "I'm never going to borrow money, and I'm not going to have any credit cards because credit cards are very dangerous." I respect that argument, and I entirely fine with people who take that position and follow through on that position.

That's a position that I have held in the past. I have been an absolutist in the past. Earlier I said that I had gone and I had all this massive amounts of credit card limit available to me, $100,000 when I was in college. Well, after college, when I got out of debt, I canceled every credit card I had, and I went from $100,000 credit limit to zero.

So I have been through that particular... I've held to that particular position as well. And I think that is probably the safest position. I have no problem whatsoever with somebody who says, "I don't borrow money. I'm not in debt. I'm never going to borrow money, and I'm going to forestall and preclude the possibility of borrowing money by even having credit cards available to me." I think that's a very safe position.

And if somebody is fully committed to that position, then I think then I respect that. I love that position, as I'll talk about in a moment. I want to talk about my own personal antipathy towards debt. But what I have learned is many people who state that subsequently change their position.

I have heard again and again and again from people in my own personal life, clients, et cetera, people who say, "I don't borrow money." And I take them at their word, and I believe them, except then a few years later, I find out that they did borrow money. Now, each of us has to navigate this particular road.

I have no problem with somebody engaging in the borrowing of money if that's a decision that they choose. I believe that it is morally wrong to default on debt. So thus, if you pledge your hand and you make an agreement to borrow money, I don't think it's morally wrong to make that agreement.

But it is morally wrong for you to not follow through on that. And you wind up putting yourself in a hazardous position where by making a pledge that you will do something, especially if it's to borrow money, you open yourself up for a moral hazard of not being able to do it through circumstances that are outside of your own hand.

That opens you up to the possibility of sin if you don't follow through on that. So that's, of course, a significant problem. But what I've learned is many people borrow money, even though they said they wouldn't. Now, of course, there are other circles and people who say, "Well, yes, I don't carry a balance, but I use credit cards for everything because it gives me good consumer protection.

It gives me good airline miles, bonus points." Those are, in my mind, strong arguments. Many of those things are strong arguments, and there are good counterarguments as well. But my focus is different because I want to talk to you about credit cards as a safe form of financing and as a cheap form of financing.

Because in the times that I have been in credit card debt in the past, I've learned that I've gotten out of that world much cheaper than many other people. So let's talk just for a moment more on debt and then also on credit cards specifically. So first on debt.

For clarity, I don't like debt. I don't like debt for me. I don't like that for any person. I don't owe anybody a dime, and I intend to never owe anybody a dime for the rest of my life. That's what I want to happen. I've learned not to make absolute statements.

You'll notice I didn't say I never will because in the past, my absolute statements, I've often found that life decisions change certain things, and then I have to rethink some of those things. But I don't like being in debt. I don't ever want to be in debt. And I can't imagine the circumstances that would ever cause me to want to be in debt in the future.

And there are two reasons for that for me personally. Number one, my highest financial priority is freedom. Freedom. I want to always be financially free. And every form of being in debt will diminish my financial freedom, including credit cards. If you are ever in debt, you will lose some of your financial freedom.

Now, you might have compelling reasons why you're willing to give up that freedom. This is normal in life. We often find compelling reasons to give up freedom. I'm married. Entering into marriage lowered my personal freedom, but I gained a whole other swath of benefits that made it worth it.

Some people go and they join, go to a university. Well, in going to the university, you're going to give up some of your personal freedom, but yet you're gaining benefits from that. Some people go and join military organizations. Well, in so doing, you're giving up a significant amount of freedom, but some people still believe that that's worth it for them to do it.

Some jobs that you take, if you go and take a job, you are giving up a measure of personal freedom, but yet you're also getting certain benefits. The unemployed person on Monday morning can do whatever they want to do, but they also have no money. Whereas the employed person needs to report for work at 9 a.m.

on Monday morning, but they get other benefits such as a paycheck. So, the appeal to freedom is not an absolute appeal. And many times people go into debt and they give up a measure of freedom because of the other things that they gain. Rather, obviously, many people will borrow money to buy a house, thus giving up some of their personal freedom.

They give up the freedom to move. They give up the freedom to change their residence without cost. They give up their personal freedom in terms of the amount of things that they have to go along with the ownership of that physical property, but they gain the benefit of living in a nice house.

And I respect those decisions. But I think you should always acknowledge that if you ever go into debt, you give up freedom. And for me, because freedom is a higher priority to me than almost anything else, including lifestyle, including almost anything else, then I don't ever want to go into debt.

The other major concern I have about debt is always that debt brings the potential for moral hazard. A moment ago, I talked about the fact that you wind up putting yourself in a hazardous position if you pledge your – you give your word, "I will pay you according to these terms," and then something happens outside of your control that causes you to fall through on that.

And now you have compromised yourself and you have not paid as agreed, which is morally wrong. That's a moral hazard. Another moral hazard is simply if you wind up deep in debt, then it can cause you to make decisions where you're prioritizing money over something else. You're deeply in debt and you know you should take a stand for what's right and what's true and what's righteous, but yet, "Oh, I can't do that because then all of a sudden my affairs will be exposed and I'll lose my house or I'll lose my car or something, so I have to just keep the job and I have to keep doing something that's unethical.

I have to keep doing something that's morally wrong." Or you might expose yourself to the potential for blackmail or some other form of of that type of situation. So being in debt can bring a significant form of moral hazard. So I don't like being in debt, but I also recognize that debt can be useful and debt can also be used in different ways.

People have different understandings of what it means to be in debt. So some people when they say, "I'm in debt," let's say you have no money and you have no money, no assets, and you owe $10,000 on student loans, are you in debt? Or are you not in debt?

Well, it should be obvious that you're in debt. Now, let's say that you have $20,000 in the bank and you owe $10,000 on student loans and you're choosing, because of the low financing terms, to simply keep those payments as they are and not to take money from your bank account to pay off student loans.

Are you still in debt? Well, there are, of course, obviously yes, and in some ways, no. Many people say, "Well, I'm not in debt," but yet they have a mortgage. Well, what if you're using these different tools and they're useful as financing tools, but you're not behind? Some people use the term being in debt to mean not making a payment as agreed, not making a time payment as agreed, and I think that's a fair argument.

So these terms have different meanings. So my point about all of this is to try to appeal to you. If you have uniquely strong opinions or uniquely strong convictions, to appeal to you to consider them and to consider what's right for you, filter everything through your own personal convictions, but to think about how you can set things up to help you and to help others.

Now, credit card debt, back to the specifics of credit card debt. Credit card debt is unique because for most people, credit card debt is a major curse in their life because most people have no plan as it relates to credit card debt. In the course content, the actual specific course content, I make it very clear that the only way to win at the credit card game is to make sure that you have a plan for eliminating your credit card debt balances completely and getting out of debt.

And that is true. The only way to win at the credit card game is to have a plan for completely eliminating your balances. But most people have no plan whatsoever, not even a plan for getting out of debt, but not even a plan for how they're using credit card debt.

The way that people assemble their credit card portfolio is fairly thoughtless. They usually just bumble into it. The mailboxes shows up with a credit card offer from the bank and they say, "Oh, this sounds good." They sent me a check and they sign up for the credit card. They're at their local retail store and local retail clerk says, "Hey, would you like to sign up for our credit card and save 5%?" "Well, sure.

Sounds good." And they don't ever put together a thoughtful portfolio that's designed to serve them or that's designed with safety in mind. And then what happens is people wind up in a situation where they desperately need access to money, need access to financing, and they wind up borrowing money from really unwise sources because they didn't put in place the infrastructure for it far in advance, especially the infrastructure related to credit cards.

I want to give you a couple of examples because my hope, as I stated earlier, hope is that you will benefit from this particular educational content for your own life, whether you're in debt, out of debt, if you're in debt, I'll help you get out of debt faster and at lower cost.

If you're out of debt, I hope you set up something as a good, useful reserve fund for yourself. And I hope that you'll take this and use this to teach to other people, because I get really frustrated with the people who are the most frequently abused by the systems that are out there are frequently the people who can't afford to be abused.

They're usually not very learned and they're not very connected and they wind up being the most deeply abused. Let me talk for an example of what I mean with related to credit cards for somebody who is financially destitute. Let's say that I were financially destitute. I had no money, I had no job, and I desperately needed a job.

But my living circumstances meant that I had to have some form of transportation to get to my job and I couldn't figure out a solution that was different from my buying a car. Well, in that circumstance, I think it makes sense to buy a car. If I need a car to get to work, as many poor and destitute people need, I need to have some way of, that's a valid decision.

Now, here are some problems that many people face when they buy cars, especially the people who are the poorest. Reasonably priced cars, good quality, cheap used cars are not traditionally financeable. You can't go and get an auto loan for a $2,000 beater from your bank. You can't go and get an auto loan for a $2,000 beater from a mainstream auto financing company.

The only place you can get an auto loan for a $2,000 beater is from a buy here pay here place. And I'll get to the problems of that in a moment. So what frequently people find out is they have to go down to Toyota financing department or Ford motor company financing department or whatever, and they have to borrow money for a new car or a mostly new car.

Well, that's a problem because a poor person, a destitute person cannot afford a new car. You cannot afford when you're broke to be driving around on a $30,000 car that's going to cost you $4,500 in depreciation this year. You need a $2,000 car in that circumstance. So this financially destitute person figures that they have no option except to buy the new car.

Years ago, I did financial counseling for this lady. She was a Spanish lady, immigrant, didn't speak English and did house cleaning for commercial cleaning. And she was driving around a very nice Honda Element, but she had to buy it mostly new for the same problem. Now, she was at her wits end.

She had no ability to, she was completely financially broke. She couldn't figure out how to get out of her problems. And the problem was that she had this stupid expensive car with an expensive car payment. And so I pleaded with her, I said, "Sell the car." But she couldn't sell the car because the car was worth less than she owed, and she didn't have the money to get out.

Sound familiar? You ever known anyone in this situation? So you have this stupid circumstance where a person who is totally broke is driving this fancy car around, but they're totally stuck because they borrowed money using the car. Now, here's the problem. Let's say this destitute person, they got to have a car.

They don't have any money. They don't have anybody who can give them a car. They can't figure out a solution. So they got to borrow the money. So we see the problems with buying a new car because you can't get financing for it. So you say, "Well, let's say I go and buy a cheap car." Well, the only way you can buy a cheap car on credit is to go to a buy here, pay here car dealership.

Well, what happens in that situation? Well, first, the car itself is sold at a very high retail price. And whereas this person, if they had $1,500 in their cash, could go on, in their pocket, they could go on Craigslist, pull out the $1,500 and buy a perfectly reasonable car off Craigslist or off the side of the road, they will pay at the buy here, pay here place $3,500 for that same vehicle.

When you're broke and poor and destitute, you can't afford to pay $3,500 for a $1,500 car. But because the buy here, pay here place will finance a $3,500 car, they feel like they have no other option. What else? What about the financing rate? Well, same thing. Financing rate is very, very high with the buy here, pay here place.

And here's what's worse. Let's say that this person goes out and signs up for the car. They go and they get the $3,500 car that's actually worth $1,500, but they paid $3,500 for it. Now they have wheels. And something happens because they're living so close to the razor edge.

Something happens and they can't make a payment. And then they can't make another payment. What happens? The repo man literally comes picks up the car from their driveway or comes to their place of work and picks up the car from the parking lot and hauls it away. And that person who is living on the razor edge has to sit there and endure the humiliation of watching their car be dragged out of the parking lot because they missed two months payments.

Most of the times when you buy a car from a buy here, pay here place, they hold the financing. The car itself has a GPS chip in it. So even if you go and hide it in your neighbor's garage, the GPS chip reports the location. And of course, people who are in this situation don't read the paperwork.

They don't understand it. They're not aware of the fact that the car has a GPS chip and the financing company can do it at any point in time. Now, what do you do? How do you solve that problem? Well, first, hopefully this is where a network comes in. Hopefully this is where somebody who has an extra car notices somebody who's destitute but who needs transportation and says, "I'll help you," and they give them a car.

Hopefully this is a situation where this person can find another solution, such as riding a bus, so they don't go into debt. But if I were in that situation, here's what I would do. I would get a credit card and I would get a cash advance on my credit card.

And I would use that cash advance on a credit card to go and buy a cheap, reasonable, used car off of Craigslist or wherever I found one. And I would use the cash advance from the credit card to pay that off. Now, what benefit do I get? Well, first of all, I finance the car, which allows me to get to work to earn money, to pay off the loan, and to pay the other things that I need to provide for my family.

Secondly, because I've used a source of financing that wasn't connected to the specific vehicle, I can shop the used market outside of the dealership, which means I get the best possibility of getting a quality vehicle at a low price. So instead of paying $3,500 for the car, I can pay the $1,500 for the car.

Third, because I'm using a source of financing that wasn't just related to the sale of the car, I also can use additional money to fix up the car or fix it if it breaks down. And I don't just have to make that monthly payment and figure out how to also come up with the extra money.

I can fix a lot of things on a $1,500 car by saving $2,000 on the purchase price. Fourth, if I get behind on my payments, there is no legal right for the credit card company to send the repo man. So I've avoided the repo man. The credit card company doesn't even know what I used the cash advance for on my credit card.

They don't even know. And so they can't send the repo man and they have no legal right to send the repo man. And now if I get two months behind because I have some unavoidable financial circumstance in my life, now if I'm two months behind, I have plenty of time as the credit card company starts sending notices and letters and such, I have plenty of time over the next year, two years, three years to work harder, save up the money and pay them off before I ever wind up in court.

And I still have the car the whole time. So credit card financing is a much safer form of financing for somebody who's in this situation than the auto loan is. You get a cheaper car, a better deal, and you have a safer situation. Now, what about the interest on that cash advance?

Because after all, what if I'm paying 18% for my cash advance percentage rate versus a cheaper loan, a 7% loan from the car dealer? Yeah, but I'm buying a car for $1,500. So if the numbers that I said are right, notice what I've done. First, I've avoided buying the $35,000 car or the $30,000 car, which is saving me huge amounts of money on the depreciation of that new vehicle.

I don't have the money. I can't afford it. Second, I'm buying it for $1,500 instead of $3,500 at the dealership because I don't need this financing system that the dealership offers. And if I do things right, very simply, I take a card, I take a cash advance, I apply for another credit card because I have a good credit score and I build my credit score.

I know what I'm doing because I took Joshua's course. And I go and I get another credit score card. I may pay 18% on that credit card for a month or two, but then I'll quickly do a balance transfer fee, balance transfer with a 3% balance transfer fee, and I've dropped my effective interest rate to 3%.

So now I have a $1,500 car and a 3% loan instead of a $30,000 car or a $3,500 car and a very expensive loan. And I have safety. So if I can't pay my loan as agreed, I can still keep the car for long enough to give me time to fix my financial situation.

That's an example of the power of credit cards. But I've never met somebody who was destitute that understood the system so they could put it in place in advance of when they need it. Unfortunately, the people who are destitute wind up being abused by the system because they don't know how it works.

Now, what about another person, somebody who's getting out of debt? If you're getting out of debt and you are committed, you're saying, "I'm getting out of debt. I'm paying off my credit cards. I'm paying off my student loans. I'm paying off my car." Well, in that situation, you should lower your expenses to the maximum degree possible, and one of your major expenses is your interest cost.

And you should always seek to improve your situation. In the course, I talk a lot about the 0% credit card game. You should borrow money at 0% any time that's cheaper and safer for you than borrowing money elsewhere at a higher percentage rate. And when you understand the safety of credit cards because of their unsecured status, frequently, if I were trying to get out of debt, I would frequently want to be refinancing debt that is less safe onto debt that is more safe.

If you're paying 6% interest on your student loans, think about paying 0% interest on a credit card and how that's superior. The student loan debt is, thankfully, very stable in terms of its interest rate. Federally guaranteed student loan debt is great. It's very stable. But you will never, no matter what happens, you will never get out of paying that debt.

It's not bankruptable. It only dies when you die. Well, credit card debt is one of the most likely debts to be discharged in any form of bankruptcy proceeding. And sometimes, if you have a good credit score and you put the systems in place, you could borrow money cheaper on a credit card than you can even at 6%.

So if I had $20,000 of student loan debt, I would very diligently be moving that debt away from student loan debt onto a credit card because it's a superior, it's a safer form of financing as measured by the creditor's ability to collect on the debt no matter what. So people who are getting out of debt, you should refinance your debt as much as possible.

Now, here's a simple example. So many times, I've worked with people who are getting out of debt. They got five credit cards, $30,000 of debt, and they're trying to dig out from under it. And so they get an offer that says, "Hey, we've got a 0% offer for introductory purchases for 18 months." And they look at that offer and they say, "No, I'm not going to use that because I'm getting out of debt." Meanwhile, they're paying 17% or 23% over here on another card.

Look at them and say, "Are you kidding me? Take that 0% offer and now put every single expense that you have onto that card and put every dollar that you were putting on that expense down on the most expensive credit card and get this thing paid off." It materially improves your situation because you can refinance.

So if you understand how these systems work, you can use the different offers that you get. Finally, what about somebody who just wants to have some form of financial backup? See, those of us who are fairly conservative financially often face a problem because when you're conservative financially, you put yourself in a situation where you can't often always take advantage of the opportunities you'd like to take advantage of.

Let's say you're committed to saying, "I'm not going to borrow money." Well, in that case, you need to have substantial cash reserves, substantial emergency funds. What's the problem with emergency funds? Frequently, they pay you very low rates of return, very low interest. Stacks of $100 bills in your closet simply don't pay any interest.

Now, they're available, they're accessible, that's useful, but they don't pay any interest. Money sitting in your savings account or a money market account pays effectively no interest in today's interest rate environment. And so it's a little hard to look down and say, "Man, I'm going to have $100,000 just sitting there, not paying any interest." And yet you know you need it for some form of emergency.

But yet, do you really? Does all of the money have to be sitting there in a savings account? Or could you do something different? Are there products and things that you could use? I maintain that there are. And most people, rely on credit cards as their primary form of defense in a financial bind.

Now, I think that's a bad move. In the course, I have a segment called just "Why You Shouldn't Use Credit Cards as a Source of Financing." One of the biggest problems with using debt, especially credit cards, as a source of financing is simply that it's never easier to pay something off later than today.

It's always easier to cut now than pay off later. Think about this. If you have a credit card and you lose your job, and your first inclination is to say, "Well, I'm going to go and I'm going to just keep my normal lifestyle and put those normal expenses on my credit card." That's what most people's plan is.

You've got a problem. Because two years from now, when you're employed again, you will have to pay double the payments. You have to pay for your future two-year lifestyle and today's lifestyle. So now, instead of having one set of monthly expenses, you have two sets of monthly expenses. It is always easier to cut now than to pay off later.

I recommend instead of going into credit card debt, just sell your house and move or sell your car or move in with your family members or move into a tent in the forest or get food from the food pantry or dump all your bills and go work from the library.

These are all better options, in my opinion, than going into debt. Because yes, you'll experience short-term pain, but now your pain only goes forward for four months. And then four months from now, when you're gainfully employed again, assuming you had no money, four months from now, when you're gainfully employed again, you put yourself in a situation where the pain stops.

You have a normal income, you have one set of expenses instead of two sets of expenses, and life is better. I'd a whole lot rather suffer for four months than suffer for four years, which is what most people who borrow money and credit cards when they get laid off wind up facing.

So back to somebody who's in the situation. So credit cards are useful because they give you dramatically huge buying power with no current carrying costs. You can have $100,000 of credit limit available to you on your credit cards, and it will cost you nothing. If you have cards with no annual fees, it costs you nothing to have access to that money.

Over time, you can systematically build that number as high as you want to and as high as they will approve you for. Let's just say you have $100,000 available to you. Now in an emergency, what do you do? You always keep some forms of cash on hand available to you.

But because you have quick access to paying ability with the credit cards, you can now afford to adjust your other portfolio of financial products slightly to give you forms of saving that are perhaps slightly less liquid, but are still pretty safe. It's my best example here. One of the things I really love about traditional whole life insurance, cash value life insurance, is the fact that it's a very, very stable asset, which means that you can effectively move it into your cash column on your balance sheet.

It's equivalent to cash in many ways. Now it's not perfectly equivalent because you can't guarantee that the money's going to be out. As a matter of practice, the insurance companies will send it to you very quickly, anywhere from 24 hours and a wire transfer to a few days and a FedEx or a mail transfer, or they'll send you a check.

But contractually, they have a right to defer that for many months. But as a matter of practice, they don't do that. But it gives you flexibility. And so if you have a situation, let's say you keep $100,000 in your cash values and your life insurance, I think that's a very reasonable number to put underneath your emergency fund.

But you wouldn't necessarily want to take it all out all of a sudden in an emergency. But what if you also simultaneously have $100,000 available to you on a credit card? So now you wind up in an emergency, you lose your job, something goes wrong, you have significant expenses.

Well, you can use the credit cards as your easy form of payment, your financing, you can then apply for various credit card financing systems. And you can apply for those at 0% or whatever you're able to get. And if you wind up in a situation where you need to pay the debt off right a second, then you go ahead and take the money from your emergency fund and pay it off.

But if you're able to finance it using the credit card system with very low risk, now you can keep your other money productive and use the credit card system. So even if you are well-heeled, and you're not in debt, you still should think carefully about setting up your access to debt in case you ever needed it.

Yesterday, I recorded an interview for Aaron Frankel's podcast, In the Rabbit Hole. And for that show, we talked about money and I just finished disaster preparedness month here on Radical Personal Finance. One of the best things you should always plan to do in a problem is leave. One of the best ways to avoid trouble is just simply leave, leave in advance.

So I told Aaron in that show, I said, "If there's an economic collapse in the United States of America, if I can, I'm just going to leave. I'm going to buy plane tickets for my family and we're going to go somewhere." Well, how do you pay for that? Credit card.

You can have backup sources of money, you can have international bank accounts, you can have foreign currency, et cetera. But as a matter of practice, you go to the airport or you go to whatever your online ticket buying service of choice is, and you buy plane tickets for your family, you load your backpacks and your suitcases and you leave.

When I travel, one of the things you always should do when you travel is make sure that you have multiple credit cards available to you. They're extremely safe as a backup form of financing. Because if somebody takes it and they make fraudulent transactions, you're not liable, you're protected from that.

And so when you go to a foreign country, you should take significant amounts of physical currency, that's useful. You should also take significant amounts of backup reserves. You might put a couple of gold coins in your money belt or something like that. But the most practical, reasonable way to have backups is to stash four or five different credit cards of Monavisa, Mono MasterCard, American Express, depending on what's going to be accepted in different situations.

And you stash those around your luggage, you stash those around your person. So that if your luggage gets stolen or your car gets stolen or your clothes get stolen, then you always have a backup form of financing to get home. It's happened to me, I had suitcases stolen when traveling, had my car broken into.

And by making sure that you think ahead and secret some things away, you're in good shape. Your vehicle, your vehicle should have backup forms of financing in it. You should have some form of cash, some amount of currency tucked away. And you should have a couple of credit cards stashed in your vehicle.

So that if you guide up in a situation, you got to figure out how to pay the tow bill. The credit card is the most reasonable, reliable way to do that. Now, most of us I think would do that just knowingly. But you also want to make sure you have the system in place.

So if you wind up in that circumstance, you can continue to borrow the money cheaper. So this is just an introductory discussion. And I simply wanted to actually record a show because it's been about two weeks now. I wanted to record the show. I want to invite you to my Q&A show tomorrow.

And I just wanted to, I want to get your mind thinking about this. And I hope you'll buy the course when I launch it on Monday. I think you'll really like it. I'm really proud of it. The other course, this is my second course offering to you. The other course that I did was a career and income planning course.

Got great feedback from that. Many of my students, a bunch of people signed up. Many of my students were satisfied. Number of people wasn't right fit. That was a very high end, expensive and in-depth, exhaustive course. It was a beast. This one is much shorter, quicker, and it'll be much less expensive.

But I think it will really serve you and will serve you with some ideas that I think are underrepresented in other places. And let me give you just one final word on kind of my business model going forward. When I started Radical Personal Finance, I had the idea, I had the dream, I had the idea that I was going to provide all this useful information for free for people.

And that was my goal. I had this dream of a 15-year old kid in the hood finding my show and saying, "Wow, I can learn everything I need to know to get out of the hood." That was my dream. And what I learned after doing the show for a few years, and so in so doing, my goal was how can I provide everything I know for free so that it's accessible to the most people?

What I learned is my audience, I have a few 15-year olds who are listening and I'm grateful for that. I'm so grateful for that. But the majority of my listening audience is composed of successful, wealthy, well-educated leaders. Now, here's the great thing about that. That means that, first of all, there's a causation correlation to wealthy, successful people who seek out in-depth information because they need more, or are they wealthy, successful because they've always sought out in-depth information?

Well, who knows? I'm inclined to say that people are wealthy and successful because they've always made a habit of seeking out the best information. That's been my personal experience. But perhaps more importantly, one of the problems you face as you go through life is you develop more, you wind up with more money and less time.

So in the beginning of life, you have lots of time and not so much money. And as you get older, more effective, more successful, bear more responsibility, you generally will wind up with less time and more money. So the business model that I took in the first couple of years of radical personal finance, of massively prolific verbal content that was minimally edited and just minimally edited, is not a good fit for somebody who's wealthy and effective and successful.

It's a good fit for somebody who doesn't have any money, but it's not a good fit for somebody who's wealthy and effective and successful. And so what I'm seeking to do is to change the paradigm, to give you more useful, concise, carefully edited information that really serves you and to charge more for it, because I think that will serve you better and it will serve me better.

So instead of pursuing all kinds of advertising, you'll notice that I've kept the show almost entirely advertising free. Instead of spending my time going out and recruiting advertisers so that I can do that, I'm going to continue to bring you good content, but I'm changing it and try to provide extremely valuable educational products for you.

That's my goal. Unique, valuable, pithy, concise, useful educational products. And here's what I'm trying to do with that. I'm trying to provide extensive personalization. So if you buy a product, you have a specific question, I'll create specific answers to you in that. And then secondly, I'm seeking to, well, I always just stand behind my words.

If you ever have a question about something that you buy and you say, well, I want to just try it, but I'm not sure about it. Always just try it. That's the great thing about digital products is it's relatively easy for me to say, try it. And if you don't like it, I'll give you your money back.

And so try out the stuff that I'm bringing to you. I hope you like it. So look for that on Monday. Join me for a live Q&A call tomorrow on Friday, and I'll be back with you soon. Thank you for listening. With Kroger brand products from Ralph's, you can make all your favorite things this holiday season because Kroger brand's proven quality products come at exceptionally low prices.

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