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That's FijiAirways.com. From here to happy. Flying direct with Fiji Airways. 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.

Today I'm going to talk to you about the lifestyles of the frugal and obscure. It sounds exciting, doesn't it? Lifestyles of the frugal and obscure. You know, they could make a TV show out of such a concept. In fact, I have seen some various videos of people who do enjoy showing off their frugality.

Unfortunately, if one were to make a TV show about the lifestyles of the frugal and obscure, it would violate the second point of obscurity. You could make a TV show on the lifestyles of the frugal, but you couldn't really make a TV show on the lifestyles of the obscure.

And yet I want you to consider this concept as a valuable outline for you to implement in your own life to help you become wealthy and stay wealthy. Let me give you the two-sentence summary of my thesis in today's show. Frugality is a pathway for you to become wealthy, and obscurity is a pathway for you to remain wealthy.

These two concepts are important. There are different phases of wealth accumulation. You have to figure out how to create an income stream, and then you have to figure out how to turn that income stream into valuable investments. That's wealth accumulation, the wealth accumulation phase. And then after you've accumulated substantial or sufficient wealth, then you have to figure out how to preserve that wealth.

That's the wealth preservation phase. This is where we talk about good investment planning, good asset protection planning, everything associated with wealth preservation. And then we move on to the wealth distribution phase, and that wealth distribution phase might include things like retirement distribution strategies. It might include things like estate planning.

How do we avoid excessive taxation or excessive cost in distributing our estate to our heirs and descendants or other causes that we wish to support? And so wealth goes through these different phases. But in the early phases especially, frugality forms the cornerstone of your wealth building. Frugality is not optional.

You must be frugal in order to become wealthy. Let me explain why. No matter how much you earn, if you are not frugal, you won't have any money available for you to invest. Thus, frugality is not optional. Now notice that frugality is a subjective word rather than an objective word.

When I use the term frugality, you should immediately think about frugality in terms of scale. What is frugal for one person may not be frugal for another person. To give you an example, purchasing for somebody who is an aspirational spender, they want to spend at a high lifestyle. For that person, purchasing a $5 million home may not be a frugal expense.

If that person doesn't have significant wealth, if they don't have large amounts of assets that are throwing off investment income for them, if they don't have a very high income, that $5 million home may be one of the most expensive and costly things they do. That is not at all frugal.

But if you look at another person, for another person, owning a $5 million home may be an extremely frugal purchase, even though it doesn't look objectively like an inexpensive frugal home. In my experience, it's not uncommon to find young working couples that have a household income of perhaps $75, $80, $100,000.

It's not uncommon to find young couples like this spending $200, $250,000 to $300,000 purchasing a home, at least where I'm from here in South Florida. That's just not unusual. This is not uncommon. But if you think about what that means in terms of wealth, then for that person, let's say that they're earning $80,000 per year and they are spending $300,000 on a home, they are spending what is equivalent to almost four years of income purchasing a house.

And it's also not uncommon when people are purchasing this kind of house for them not to have any real significant savings. They may be enrolled in a 401k plan at work and have $10,000 or $15,000. They may have saved up a small down payment, but perhaps this is an FHA loan where they only had to come up with a 3% down payment.

So maybe they're putting down $10,000, something along that range. So for this person, purchasing this $300,000 home is a fairly expensive thing when compared to their income and to their assets. Now let's turn it around. Let's say that somebody has a net worth of $20 million and they've accumulated this net worth over a course of years through business or through their own personal investments.

And with this net worth of $20 million, let's just use a very simple, very conservative idea of the 4% rule. The 4% rule, meaning that this is producing $800,000, their $20 million portfolio is producing $800,000 of income. That would be extraordinarily conservative for such a significant portfolio. But this person has an $800,000 income.

Now for them to go and to spend four years of their earnings, of their income on a house, that would put them in a price range of $3,200,000 of buying a house. So let me adjust it to, so we've got $20 million. Let's take 4% of that, $800,000, and let's make it the same 3.75 years of income.

3.75 years of income puts them at a $3 million house. So this person could take and go and spend, buy a $3 million house. But if you think about their net worth calculation, they still have $20 million set aside in investments. And so even though they might buy a $3 million house, which is equivalent in income to the working couple, it's actually an extremely frugal decision for them.

This is why it's so important to be frugal, but to apply frugality, apply the lens of scale to all of your frugal decisions. But no matter your current income, no matter your current wealth, you must be frugal. If you are not frugal, you will lose your wealth. I repeat, if you are not frugal, you will lose your wealth.

We can point to example after example after example, most prominently from the world of entertainment, from the world of large professional sports, from these types of people who come into huge amounts of money, but then they quickly inflate their lifestyle. And it's not uncommon to find these people who are quickly bankrupt.

Now thankfully, usually if they've built up some kind of name recognition, they can amend their ways and earn huge amounts of money again to rebuild their wealth. But the lack of frugality will destroy their wealth. So you must be frugal to become wealthy. If you will practice frugality in your expenses, then over time you can become very wealthy.

If you will practice frugality, over time you can become very wealthy. And the reason is the frugality, because it is subjective to your income and to your position in life and to your current lifestyle. As long as you are practicing frugality that is truly appropriate for your situation, that will free up investment income, that will free up savings, surplus cash that you can then invest and those investments can make you wealthy.

And if you'll practice that throughout your entire lifetime, you can always be wealthy. Now the question is, why would you practice frugality? See, many people have this misunderstanding about those others who are frugal. Many people who are profligate spenders have a misunderstanding about people who are dedicated and diligent savers.

The profligate spender very likely looks at the person who is a dedicated saver and believes that the dedicated saver is missing out on the great things of life. They believe that the dedicated saver is missing out on the joy of life. The raison d'être, the substance, the meaning that the spender gets from spending their money.

What they don't understand is the saver looks at the world in an entirely different way. The saver doesn't look at the world and believe that they're giving up anything. Rather, the saver looks at the world and believes that they have a superior path to the person who is the spender.

Now there can be a conversion of sorts. You can convert a spender into a saver. You can convert a saver into a spender if you can show them the value of a different path. But based upon what you value, you will probably make different decisions. Back to my theme for the show, lifestyles of the frugal and obscure.

The desire to be rich and famous, the desire to have a high social standing, will often lead to extravagant spending. And unfortunately, the idea of being rich is often against the idea of being famous. I'm not saying this is an absolute ironclad rule. Of course there are people who are both rich and famous.

But there are a lot of people who are very interested in being famous who don't wind up being rich. Now if you value status, your social standing, your social status, or how you are perceived by others, if those are high personal priorities for you, it'll be very difficult for you to become wealthy.

So you should think carefully about committing yourself to that high social status. Usually, achieving high social status involves some significant spending, especially in consumer-oriented cultures. In value-oriented cultures, where your value is based upon the good work that you do or the good character you have, then you can achieve high social status based upon those character qualities.

Unfortunately, the United States of America is a very consumer-oriented culture, and we minimize the value of character, ethics, and we maximize the value of beauty and flash and appearances. Now my hope is that this will change in time, but if it's changing, it certainly seems very slow at the moment.

One of the biggest challenges, especially in US American culture, is the prioritization of youth. There are some cultures where people look forward to aging because of the increased respect that they receive in the community. They look forward to being an honored and respected person. The United States is almost the exact opposite, where we look down on people as they age, and we prioritize youth and beauty.

So if you're going to practice frugality, you will have to consciously choose a different value system. For example, you might be very motivated to practice frugality if you value being wealthy. Not looking wealthy, not looking rich, but being rich, being wealthy. You might practice frugality much more easily if you value freedom of choice, the ability to do whatever you want to do when you want to do it, the ability to look your boss in the face when they give you an unethical assignment and say, "That's it.

I'm done. I don't need you. I don't need this work." If you value personal freedom, financial freedom, then these values might lead you to practice frugality. So lifestyles of the frugal and obscure, well, frugality can lead you to becoming wealthy. Ironic, isn't it? The more you practice frugality, the richer you can become.

Lifestyles of the rich and famous often results in people being famous and losing their wealth. Lifestyles of the frugal, on the other hand, often lead to people being rich, being wealthy. Now what about obscurity? Obscurity is a slightly more difficult topic, but this does go back to values. The ironic truth is that obscurity leads more easily to the accumulation of greater wealth and it leads to the maintaining or preservation of great wealth.

Now, let me give you an example, and perhaps this will show you the importance of this practice. And I'm going to start with a kind of a silly example and try to use it as an object lesson to come to some more practical discussions. Most of my listeners are US Americans.

I'm very fortunate to have a good number of international listeners, and most of those international listeners come from wealthy Western nations. So this is applicable in those nations as well. But in the United States of America, we're very fortunate, most of us, to live in a very safe society.

And thus we don't really worry too much about ostentatious displays of wealth. At least we don't worry in terms of physical danger. But that's not always true. Consider this. Think about the bad part of town where you live, the part of town where you live where the most crime occurs.

Would you really want to dress up in fancy-looking clothes, adorn your wrist and your neck with flashy jewelry, put your date on your arm, drive a fancy-looking convertible down to the dive restaurant or the dive bar, the seedy establishment, just for a casual dinner out with dancing afterward? Would that really be a good idea for you?

No matter how much you might want to do that, you would really recognize that's not wise. Now, how could you be able to eat at that restaurant or drink at that bar and dance at that club and be able to protect yourself from being attacked, from being robbed? I think there are two obvious strategies.

The first strategy is obscurity, blending in. If you didn't look like an outsider, but rather if you look like the kind of person that is appropriate and a normal patron in that establishment, then you probably wouldn't have a high enough profile for anybody to worry about. Now if that seedy bar or seedy restaurant is on the water and you drove a beat-up pickup truck and wore a pair of khaki shorts and flip-flops and an old beat-up t-shirt, you would fit right in.

Nobody would think you're wealthy. They can't look at you and see how much wealth you have. They can just simply look and see how much wealth you're trying to display. Or whatever clothing or vehicle choice would be appropriate for that bar. You could blend in by choosing a strategy of obscurity.

The second strategy is a strategy of obvious strength. You could visit that establishment in the company of a cohort of bodyguards and obvious defenses. You could cruise down to that restaurant and yes, you're in your shiny, you know, convertible, fancy-looking convertible, but if there's an armored suburban in front of you with a crew of tough-looking guys and an armored suburban in back, there's a good chance you're going to be left alone.

So you can display that obvious strength. Either one of these strategies is appropriate. And some people are simply not able to choose a strategy of obscurity. If you are a rich and famous person, if your face is well-known, you're a movie star, you're a popular entertainer, you can try to conceal yourself and disguise yourself.

But if you always travel with a retinue of paparazzi, you're pretty much always going to stand out. And so your solution at that point is to choose obvious strength, to choose to travel in the company of bodyguards, to put up giant walls around your estate. And that's what people who achieve notoriety and fame often have to do.

If you look at people, no matter, my favorite is the hypocrisy of people like Mark Zuckerberg and other very popular social leaders who advocate for certain political ideas and ideologies that don't involve people's ability to protect themselves. And yet they construct massive estates, build giant walls around their estates and spend lavishly on bodyguards and armed security.

Now I think that's an appropriate decision. I just think that we should all be humble enough to recommend to others that they're able to take exactly the same choice and make the same actions as we take. So that obvious strength comes with the place. Sometimes you can't blend in.

Sometimes you have to buy eight lots, bulldoze seven of the houses and build giant walls in order to keep the riffraff out. But if you can blend in, if you can practice obscurity, you can achieve that safety at a lower cost. It's much cheaper for you to perhaps keep around a beat up old car or a beat up old pickup truck, a pair of worn out shorts and a beat up t-shirt and a pair of flip flops.

Much easier to keep that outfit around than to pay for 24/7 armed protection for yourself. Now here's the reality. Let's talk about asset protection. In asset protection, it's not what you do necessarily that determines your vulnerability. Your vulnerability to a financial attacker. It's not necessarily what you do. It's what you own.

I repeat, with asset protection, it's not what you do, but what you own that determines your vulnerability. It is certainly true that some people have lifestyles and activities that raise their profile. Let me use an example from an asset protection book I read one time. They were referring to a physician.

Now, of course, a physician, a doctor, is known to have a high profile and most physicians are concerned about asset protection. And so the standard line of thinking that doctors engage in is they think, well, if I'm going to be sued, it's going to be based upon medical malpractice.

That's the most likely avenue of attack. And perhaps that's true. But if you're a physician, and again, I read this in a book, they're referring to a client who believed that that was the only avenue of attack. And so that physician had a very nice, handsome, very expensive $5 million medical malpractice liability insurance policy, which did nothing for them when they were targeted with a $2 million sexual harassment lawsuit.

Now, why would somebody face a lawsuit? Well, of course, they may have done something wrong and the person may have a legitimate claim. That's obvious. But even if you've done nothing wrong, you will still be the target of an opportunistic attacker who knows that you have wealth. And if you look and act like someone who is wealthy, if you portray yourself as somebody who is rich and famous, you can easily be targeted because you raise your attack profile very high.

Obscurity is one of the best, most practical forms of defense. When advisors perform asset protection planning, most of their focus is not on privacy or secrecy or obscurity. Most is on putting in place the significant legal impediments to somebody being able to make a claim against them in the first place and to be able to collect on a claim if successful.

And those strategies are super important. I love the topic of asset protection planning. I really want to figure out, you know, I've tried to figure out how to create a course on this subject. It's very challenging because so much of it is scale dependent. Asset protection planning for somebody with $1,000 or $10,000 is very different than somebody with a couple hundred thousand, and that's very different from a mere millionaire to a multimillionaire.

And because there's cost and complexity involved, you have to think very flexibly along the line. And I really want to bring you and do it, and I'm working on it. I don't know if I can do it effectively. I'm going to try. I want to do it really well, but I'm working on it.

But today, we're talking about the stuff that keeps you off people's radar. And that's where privacy comes in. Obscurity comes in. If you will dedicate yourself to practicing obscurity with your wealth, you will minimize the number of financial attacks you face. Because let's be frank about the way the legal world works.

The legal world runs on money. Now there is a segment of the legal industry that is devoted to criminality, and this is important. It's important for you to protect yourself from charges of criminal conduct. First, you need to be very careful about how you live and what you do.

You should be very careful and scrupulous in all your affairs so that you avoid breaking the law. Now unfortunately, no matter how hard you try, it is impossible for you in our modern world, especially in the US American system, it is impossible for you to avoid breaking the law.

The estimates by some scholars, famously with one book, that the authors I think did a good job defending their case, but the estimates are that most of us commit on average about three felonies a day. Now we don't know what they are. We're not intentionally committing wrong. But when you have a world of crimes that are not immoral, they're just criminal conduct, crimes that are malaprohibita instead of malaensae, when you have a world in which these crimes exist, you can't avoid breaking the law.

The question is just simply, have you been caught? Have you come under scrutiny for your behavior, for your actions? Now you can protect yourself from the world of criminality. I've talked extensively on Radical Personal Finance about how to protect yourself from the police, how to protect yourself from criminal charges, how to make sure that you've done everything possible to protect yourself from criminal charges being brought against you.

You can also protect your finances in case criminal charges are brought against you, even if you are found guilty and you face some penalty for the criminal crimes that you are convicted of. But the risk of that is much smaller than the risk of your facing civil litigation. The risk of facing civil litigation is very high.

But how does that work? Well, somebody has a complaint against you. Whether that complaint is real and legitimate because of some wrong that you have committed, or whether that complaint is illegitimate or made up in some way or exaggerated, is relatively immaterial to have a complaint against you. Now for them to come after you, most people want it to be worth their time.

There are some people who will come after you based upon the principle of the thing. They will spend their time, spend their money, spend their emotional energy seeking your prosecution because they want you to be held accountable for the wrong that you have allegedly committed. I respect that. Unfortunately, the number of people there is very small.

And that number seems to be declining, at least by my account. In civil litigation, if you are found guilty of a wrong, in civil litigation, there are three different kinds of monetary damages that the court can award to the plaintiff. And those three kinds of monetary damages are compensatory damages, nominal damages, and punitive damages.

So compensatory damages, this award has the goal of making the plaintiff whole for the economic harm suffered. And so that's where, what's the actual way to make somebody whole? Very good. Nominal damages are a symbolic award where somebody is found to have done wrong, but perhaps the award is not monetarily large, something like a dollar.

And so yes, there was an actual problem found. There was somebody who was guilty of malfeasance, but the nominal award is just symbolic in nature. They are guilty and they owe $1 in nominal damages. And then of course, punitive damages, the goal of assessing punitive damages on a plaintiff is to punish them for their conduct and to deter future conduct.

Now in the past, seeking nominal damages was more common when legal fees and court costs were lower. Somebody would take you to court in order to seek to be vindicated for what you have done wrong. But today with court costs and legal fees being quite significant, it's less common for a plaintiff to take you to court and not be seeking significant compensatory or punitive damages.

Now what practically happens when somebody wants to take you to court? The reality is it's almost always about money. After all, an attorney that somebody is going to hire and they bring in a lawsuit against you, the attorney works for a living and they've got to pay their bills and fund their retirement, pay for their kid's college, just like anything else.

And so an attorney may agree to take a case against you and they may even agree to take it on a contingency basis where there's no guarantee of payment unless they actually win. But they're normally only going to do that if they believe they're actually going to get paid.

Now of course, there are attorneys who will take a case on a contingency basis because that's an important stand or an important legal work that they do, but that's pretty few and far in between. Most attorneys are only going to take a case if they believe they're going to get paid for their work.

Now if a potential defendant in a case doesn't have any assets to collect on, the attorney isn't going to get paid. And so one of the first standard practices in somebody who is actually bringing a complaint against you is for the plaintiff's attorney to do an asset search on that potential defendant in order to find out what they have.

They're certainly going to do that before they commit themselves to taking the case on the basis of a contingency fee. Now if the plaintiff is willing to pay the attorney for their work, then they might be willing to do it whether or not you have assets or not. But if the asset search doesn't reveal any significant assets because you have practiced obscurity, you have put in place systems for your financial privacy, or if you've protected your assets very well, the attorney has to sit down and make a calculation.

Is it really worth their time? Are they likely to be paid for their efforts? Because even if you have assets, if the attorney can see that they're well protected, first if the attorney can't find them, that sows doubt into their mind. But if they can see that they're well protected, then even if they win the case, they can know that collecting on the judgment may be a very long and expensive battle that is fraught with problems and troubles.

And this is one of the goals of good asset protection planning. If you've positioned yourself first through obscurity and second through a vigorous defense, through obvious forms of protection, think back to my silly little example of going to the bad restaurant in the bad part of town. You first practice obscurity.

And then if somebody pierces your obscurity, your privacy, then you want to make sure that you look like a strong person. Well even very practically, if the attorney wants to take that case, they're going to tell the plaintiff, "Hey, listen, I'm willing to take it, but I want some big fees up front." And all of a sudden, instead of the plaintiff being able to bring the case with the attorney against you, with no attorney's fees up front, all of a sudden if the plaintiff has to come up with 10, 20, $30,000, there's a good chance of their not being able to come up with the money.

Now, the discussion of being physically strong, of displaying that strength financially, that's a discussion that goes on. Because even if, and it plays into, it's very important in asset protection planning, as I just went through. If somebody brings, they've got to find an attorney, they may have to come up with significant fees.

And then even another important part of good asset protection planning is you're trying very hard to make sure that you seem so strong that the plaintiff will settle, that they'll fold more quickly, and that they'll fold out of court. The vast majority of civil litigation is settle out of court.

I think it's something like 90, 95%. And so one of your most important goals is to be a strong defendant so that you can use that leverage if the suit is brought, to at least get them to settle out of court quickly. And also to be a strong defendant so that even if things go all the way through, you lose the case, that the judgment is difficult or impossible to collect against you.

So that's for another day when we talk about being physically strong. But today I'm just simply focusing on obscurity. Because if you could just simply not be targeted in the first place, if a potential plaintiff didn't know that you were wealthy, you've cut them off at the knees. They're not even going to go and consult the attorney.

I mean, simple, obvious example. Normal person runs into you and you're driving a $500 Beater Toyota Camry. Are they going to look at you and say, "Well, you probably have deep pockets. I'm going to sue you." Now flip that around, you're driving a $200,000 Bentley. The person is going to have a very different response based upon their perception of you.

Now here's what's cool. Frugality and obscurity are things that you can do. You don't need a financial advisor. You don't need to put in place any kind of a dramatic, exotic strategies. You just practice frugality and you shut up. So let me finish today's show with just some suggestions for you to consider.

Think creatively on these. You adjust these for your situation. But one of the best lines of defense for you financially to protect your assets, frugality helps you accumulate them, obscurity helps you protect them. One of the best lines of defense is simply for people not to know what you own.

It's simply for people not to have any idea about your financial affairs. Now there are different levels that you can take this based upon your own understanding of the ethical nature of these suggestions. So first, you can simply avoid giving information about your affairs to others. You can choose never to talk about how much money you earn.

You can choose never to talk about how much money you have. You can choose never to talk about what assets you own. You can just simply never tell anybody where and how you invest. You can shut your mouth. You have the right to be silent. Nobody can force you to open your mouth and say anything about what you own.

With the exception of a debtor's examination, if you lose a judgment in court or what's it called in divorce, where they can force you to disclose your assets in a divorce proceeding. With those exceptions, nobody can force you to talk about what things you own. But remember here, we're talking about just avoiding the complaint in the first place.

So if nobody knows how much money you earn, how much money you have, what assets you own, where and how you invest, they don't need to know. And you can extend this to whatever degree you want. For example, let's say you own a couple of rental houses or a handful or a dozen rental houses.

Do your tenants really need to know how many rental units you have? Does anybody need to know how many rental properties you have? Do your tenants need to know that you own any other units at all? Does anyone need to know? Or where your assets are or even that you own real estate?

Nobody actually has to know what you do in your time away from work, other than perhaps your spouse or your close family. And even they don't necessarily have to know the extent of your holdings. Now you could keep these things circumspect. If you have a tenant in a property, that tenant could easily believe that that one property is the only property that you have.

Now think about it from the tenant's perspective. You may actually have 50 individual pieces of real estate. But if all 50 of those individual pieces of real estate are compartmentalized, they're privately owned with no paper trail easily back to your name, if you don't represent yourself as being the big hot shot on top of owning these 50 units, if you just seem like an average guy, an average gal coming by in a kind of a mediocre car, keeping the place up, doing okay, then something happens.

They slip. They fall. What's wrong with the property? Are they going to be as incentivized to sue you if they think you have one property or if they think you have 50? If they think you have one, they don't know anything about the depths of your pockets. Now you could take this on.

For example, you could feed out false information or misinformation. This can range from simply misleading people by staying silent or choosing the information that you declare to outright lies. For example, if you have a tenant, but that tenant believes because it's either true or because they're simply led to believe by your absence of statements that your property is heavily indebted and you have no equity and you're having a tough time right now keeping your business afloat.

Well, now all of a sudden you've gone from possibly wealthy real estate investor with one property to, "Hey, this guy's not doing very well. He only has one property and it's got a big old mortgage on it. Can't get much out of him." Now you can extract this and extrapolate this to other areas as well.

Perhaps you own multiple businesses. If so, do your employees in one business need to know about your other businesses? Do they need to know anything about your assets? You don't have to tell them. Perhaps the most obvious example, do you need to post anything on social media about what you own or what you do?

Do you need to post pictures of yourself out on your boat, out on your ranch, having a great time? Now this is hard when it comes to ego. This is hard. Interestingly, one of the things that my wife and I have chosen to do is to stop using social media.

And so as we travel around the country, we haven't posted anything on social media about where we are and what we're doing. We don't take pictures of ourselves in all these peak locations to try to make our friends jealous. That was hard. Now I don't think of myself as a very ego-driven person.

I think of myself as, or I try to be, a fairly humble person. But it's funny how even in the first few weeks of us being on the road, we were so ingrained with this cultural attitude that I've got to put it on Facebook in order for people to think I'm cool, that I can travel the world full-time.

I got to put this on my blog so my listeners will think I'm cool. Nobody needs to know. And if you avoid doing that, you can avoid a lot of potential attacks. So you can just simply avoid giving information about your affairs to others. You can give out false information or misinformation, as the case may be.

And again, that could range from just misleading statements to omitting talking about things to give people the impression without making an explicit statement that is factually wrong. You could easily give people certain impressions about your wealth. People do this all the time. This is part of signaling theory, which is a conversation for another day.

But I could lead you to believe that I were totally broke, or I could lead you to believe that I were extremely wealthy based upon what I said without ever saying an actual outright lie. So you could casually give off the impression of your lack of financial status. If you dress and act and live in a fairly ordinary way and you don't advertise your expensive experiences, if they happen, you keep them private, you keep the records of those to the minimum and you don't put them on Facebook, most people will just assume you not to have a lot of money because you don't dress rich, you don't drive rich, and you don't act rich.

You could talk about your financial woes. A simple statement, "I'll be working until the day I die." Or "Man, debt just gets more expensive." Things like that could adjust people's perceptions of you. And then of course you can always adjust the ownership of your assets. You could actually use assets that are not owned, which leads to less of a paper trail.

You could use a boat club rather than owning a boat, or you could rent an airplane or rent an RV. Instead of owning them, you get the same experience, but you adjust your perception of why people think you're rich or not. You could lead statements like, "I rent this house that I live in." Even if that rental is a mere administrative fact, you actually own the corporation that owns the house and you rent from the corporation.

It's a simple administrative fact, we're not getting into the taxation of it, but it gives you the ability to tell something true. "I rent this house." Nobody needs to know what trust actually, who's the beneficiary of a trust that owns the house, etc. We can go down that road as far as you want.

And of course here are some other things I got to wrap up. Here are some simple action steps for you to consider. Downplay the wealth signals you send out. If you want to drive a luxury car, drive a luxury Toyota instead of a Lexus. You get the same features, the same drivability without the indication of prestige.

Focus on living in a comfortable, pleasant house instead of an ostentatious house. Don't talk about your wealth or your assets or your investments, especially stop posting online or displaying them on social media. And again, the only reason you would ever make these statements is if it's part of your signaling work that you're trying to adjust how you're perceived because it benefits your career in some way.

This is why financial advisors always drive BMWs. They're leased. They don't have a dime to their name, but they drive a BMW because they want you to think they're doing well. This is why attorneys wear flashy clothes. This is why people who give off seminar courses talk about how much money they have and the assets that they have because they want you to think they're doing well so that you'll buy their stuff.

And so you could also diversify the storage of your wealth and your assets so that the total amount of your assets isn't obvious to any one person. Don't have everything you own in one place. Do you really have to have all of your cars and your motorcycles and your boats and your RVs?

Do those things really need to be parked on the same piece of property where your house is, where you casually have people over? I don't think so. You don't have to have all of those things right in one specific place. You could have all of those things diversified. You could have a modest, comfortable house and you could keep your RV and your boat and your airplane in a private hangar that you don't talk about.

So then when somebody comes over to your house and they slip and fall on your front sidewalk, they don't look up at your $800,000 motor coach and say, "Man, I got to sue this guy." They just say, "This guy's got a house and a fairly ordinary car." Similar things don't have all your bank accounts or investment accounts with a single institution.

Diversify those things. And then you could physically obscure them, obscure the ownership of your assets. You could, again, physically obscure that you own them with diversification strategies. You could legally obscure the ownership. You can compartmentalize your life and your activities. If you like fancy cars and nice clubs, consider partaking of them on your own time and in your own place.

Keep the flashy car parked in your garage at your house in Palm Beach. And that's what you use to take to the Everglades Club. At your business in Jacksonville or in Newark, New Jersey, just keep that old F-150 handy so that when your tenants and your business partners see you, you're driving the F-150 and keep your wealthy, flashy lifestyle constrained to the island of Palm Beach.

Closing comments. If you want to lead the lifestyle of the rich and famous, make sure that you're with people who are rich and famous. Don't lead the lifestyle of the rich and famous in front of or with people who are not rich and famous. But I would commend to you that a lot of the joy of living a rich and meaningful life now is more available to you if you practice frugality and obscurity.

And you have a much higher certainty of building financial freedom in 10 years or less if you will practice frugality and obscurity. And after you've built financial freedom, you'll have a much better chance of maintaining your financial freedom with your practice of frugality and obscurity. The lifestyles of the rich and famous may be what people look up to.

It might be what people aspire to. But the lifestyles of the frugal and obscure are well worth your consideration. Thank you for listening to today's show. Before we go, I want to thank you to many of you, several hundred of you who have purchased the credit card course that I have created for you.

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It's really good. You'll like it. Guarantee 30-day money back guarantee. If you don't like it, if you don't think it's worth 40 bucks, just write me an email and I'll refund your money. Thank you for listening.