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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'd like to talk with you about the value of just do it. Just try it. Just test it. I want to share with you two stories to drive home to you a very simple point. The first story has to do with investments, specifically investments in things that many of us have never particularly experienced, such as investing in gold.

I was recently answering a question that somebody asked about the prospect of investing in gold. Now gold is one of the most hotly debated topics in the world of investing. There are people on one side who say nobody should ever buy gold. It's a worthless, useless metal. It's nonproductive.

And then on the other hand, there are people who say everybody should put everything in gold. After all, it's the only thing that will stand when the world goes crazy and everything else goes to zero. So as you would imagine, people have questions on this and they want to make good decisions.

And so when you go with a question like this and you ask for advice, the problem is you're simply going to receive advice from a number of different people who are operating from a number of different perspectives. Now years ago, I did not own any gold. I had never invested in gold and being a student of mainstream investing philosophy, I was under the, I was of the opinion that gold was basically a worthless investment.

After all, it's unproductive and it doesn't really have any use. And I was completely convinced that gold, nobody should own gold. That was the advice that I used to give to people when they would ask me this question. Then in time, I started thinking more deeply about the issues and the questions and I started researching the topic of investing in gold.

And I came to believe that there were other valid positions other than the one that I had. I wasn't sure I was wrong, but I wasn't sure anymore that I was right. And I didn't really know what to do. And somebody gave me this advice. They said, just go and buy a gold coin.

And I decided, you know what, I'm just going to go and buy a gold coin. I'm going to see what this is like. Now there've been very few times in my life where I have felt dirty when doing something, but this was genuinely one of those times. I went and looked and found the information for a local coin shop right in my town.

And then I drove to the coin shop and I had my cash in my pocket. Didn't really know what I was doing. And I went to the front door and I was, of course, a little bit weirded out by the double doors that coin shops always have. And I went in and I remember I felt like I was buying drugs.

I felt like I was doing something illegal. It was so weird for me. I felt like I was abandoning the investment faith that had been handed down through the ages, that nobody should buy gold. But I was convinced that I wanted to buy a gold coin and see what it was like.

And so finally the representative of the coin shop finished with their other customer and they were ready for me. And I said, "Link, I'd like to buy a gold coin, but I don't really know what to buy." And I started talking with them. And then I started asking questions about what to buy.

And long story short, I walked out 30 minutes later with a gold coin in my pocket and more importantly, an education. Now in my case, I still remember, I still have the coin that I bought. I bought a one-tenth ounce gold American Eagle. It was probably a couple hundred bucks at the time, but that was it.

It was a couple hundred bucks. And I had this little gold coin. And as I went home with this little gold coin, just looking at it, I had a very different understanding of what it was like to invest in gold than I had a couple hours earlier. I had asked lots of questions of the coin dealer.

I started to understand a little bit about the bid and the ask, which is the way that gold coins are dealt with. And then I started to have a different appreciation for the gold coin than I had before owning it. Now I'm not going to go any farther on the gold discussion at the moment.

I just want you to understand the lesson, which is if you can go and simply try something for yourself with minimal cost and minimal risk, you're probably better served to just go do it and try it than you are to spend hours and hours and hours researching it. Now I've long been a fan of the aphorism of you should take as much time researching an investment as it takes you to earn the money that you put into it.

I like that. I don't think it's actually practical to do in all circumstances, but what I like about that little nugget is it gets your mind moving in the right direction. When you're going to make a big investment, make sure that you understand that investment through and through and make sure that you have exhaustively researched the potential benefits and potential drawbacks of that investment.

On the other hand, if you're going to make a small investment, I would say don't spend all that much time. Just go try it. Just go do it. Now in my case, buying the gold coin was a total risk of what, a couple hundred dollars? What was the risk?

Well, the risk was that I was going to have to walk back into the coin shop the next day and sell the gold coin back to the coin dealer. Maybe the gold market went down a little bit, the spot price declined in one day, and I had to pay the difference between the bid and the ask.

Whatever, big deal. So I lose 50 bucks, big deal. What I actually gained from simply taking action instead of talking about it was a wealth of experience. A wealth of experience. Now in that case, the risk was relatively small. Story number two, I have just returned from a week and a half of traveling.

And let me tell you, I'm tired of traveling. When I was younger, I used to think, "I just want to travel all the time. I want to travel. I want to travel." Well, I think I probably like traveling about as much as anybody. But in a whole lot of traveling over the years, I've come to view traveling in a more objective light.

And I'm grateful for that because I no longer put travel at the very top of my list. And I think a lot of people who dream about the day when they retire just so they can go and travel, they have that there, not because it's something that they actually want or are actually pursuing, but just because it's an idea that seems nice to them, that seems like something they want to do.

I vividly remember the first time I took a business trip, a traveling business trip. I was so excited. I was working for a company at the time, and I had to travel from Florida to California and I had to do all the big boy things. I had to order a car.

I ordered a black limousine car, not a big stretch, but just I ordered a Lincoln Town Car Service to pick me up. And I flew out there by myself. I had a hotel room and everything, and then I flew back home. And I thought, "Huh, that wasn't nearly as fun as I thought it was going to be." But then times have gone on, and over the years I've done a whole lot of adventure travel, a lot of times on the cheap.

And each time I've learned something, and a lot of times I've come back saying, "Huh, that really wasn't as fun as I thought it was going to be." Now, I still like traveling, but I've come to learn that I like certain styles of traveling, certain types of traveling. I don't know how much money I've spent over the years on travel, but all things considered, probably not that much.

More recently, since I buy many plane tickets at a time instead of one, but not that much. What I've realized is I like a little bit of travel, but I don't like constant travel. That's not for me. And so what it means is that if I'm imagining forward in my life, and I'm trying to lay out what's my perfect lifestyle, I don't have to budget in years and years of travel into my early retirement plans.

I can just budget in a little bit of travel here and there, and I can be content. And so by spending a little bit of money now, I've gained valuable experience that will help me to spend less money down the road. I've learned by experience. Now, I personally think there are probably different personality types.

Some people need to learn by experience, some people don't. And I think I'm probably one of those, and I don't really believe what people tell me until I've tried it out for myself. I'm a person that likes to gain experiences. So if you have a different personality type, that's fine.

But I would encourage you, if you're the kind of person who's sitting back and just researching, researching, researching, cut it off and just try it. Don't ask more questions about what do I do if this, what happens if, what do I do if that? Just go and do it.

Cover your downside, protect yourself, understand a little bit of what the risks are. But if you can try something inexpensively, try it. If you've always wanted to get a job in a certain industry, just go get a job. If you wanted to move to another town, move. If you wanted to buy a certain thing or invest in a certain thing, you wanted to buy some gold or buy a mutual fund or buy Bitcoin, just do it.

And you'll learn so much more by doing it than you will by reading about it. Spend time thinking carefully about big questions and big issues. But if you can try something inexpensively, do it. And by the way, when it comes to the big issues, a lot of times one of the best things you can do is still apply the same principle.

Before you go and open a restaurant, make sure you've at least worked in a restaurant. Before you go and spend millions of your dollars becoming a property developer, make sure you've at least spent some time with somebody and volunteered for somebody who does property development. Be a doer and you'll get better data to make better decisions.

And as your good decisions compound over time, you'll get much better results. Thank you for listening to today's show. I'd encourage you as we close out, I'm offering a couple of sales. And right now, if you go to radicalpersonalfinance.com/store, you can sign up for either of the classes that's currently available.

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