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Visit yamava.com/palms to discover more. 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 today we're going to finish out a long-running video series here on Radical Personal Finance. Excuse me, audio series. The video part is new. But on the audio podcast, we finished out a series last couple of months called "The Seven Rings of Liberty," "Seven Rings of Freedom," where I talk to you about the things that you can do on the way to financial independence that will help you to achieve ultimate financial freedom, the things that you can do while you're building your way to financial freedom.

It's my own personal conviction that one of the biggest mistakes that we make in modern financial planning is we wait until we have tons of money to experience the riches of life. And yet I think that's really fundamentally flawed with everything that we know about how life works. We know that the thing that is not guaranteed in life is more time.

Now, of course, money is not guaranteed as well, but we're none of us guaranteed tomorrow. And so time is the most precious thing. And so it's my firm conviction that we owe it to ourselves to work diligently to enjoy the daily fruits of wealth while we're actually on the way to financial freedom, that we don't have to actually wait all that long, wait forever, until we are financially free.

And so this series that I did called "Seven Rings of Freedom" was my attempt to give you some ideas, some things that have helped me to achieve massive levels of liberty, massive levels of freedom, while working towards ultimate financial independence, while working towards ultimate financial freedom. Now, ring number one, we talked about spiritual liberty.

I did a whole show where I talked to you about the value. If you can become personally free, if you can become spiritually free, you can be in any kind of external circumstance, any kind of slavery or bondage that you may happen to fall into, and you can go through it with relative ease.

You can go through it without feeling like you're a slave, because if you're free inside, if you're spiritually free, you can enjoy the circumstances of life. Talked about it on the level of spiritual freedom, in terms of religious freedom, talked about it in terms of being free from things like substance abuse, things like being addicted to some kind of substance.

You can have all the money in the world, but if you're a drug addict, you're not free. Meanwhile, if you're not a drug addict, you can be free even if you don't have all the money in the world. So that was ring one, was spiritual liberty. Ring number two is I talked about spousal liberty.

I talked about how much freedom my wife and I have enjoyed in our lifestyle from simply being in a situation where she's a stay-at-home mom, and how that's been one of the best, most freeing lifestyle decisions that we ever made, and why I highly recommend it. Number three, we talked about family liberty.

I shared with you some ideas about the value of home education and how that gives us total freedom over time, the ability to come and go throughout the world as we like, the ability to be completely and totally free as a family based upon educating our children at home.

It's remarkable. Those, however, were more lifestyle choices. They weren't so nuts and bolts. And that was where in the fourth show in this series, I moved to spending liberty, and I talked about the value of being free from debt. I shared with you how if you're totally debt-free, you have total control over your income.

You can live on your income if you're totally debt-free. Right now, as I record this on May 6, 2020, there are a lot of us who are really struggling right now because of the economic effects from the coronavirus fallout. But I guarantee you, if you are completely debt-free, you are struggling a lot less than so many people who have worries, constant and never-ending worries, about the amount of payments that they have to make.

That's a real, real opportunity to gain freedom. When you have no payments, your future is never determined by your past because you've made no promises for your future. It's really one of the simplest ways that you can gain an almost total level of personal freedom, is by becoming and committing to staying completely debt-free.

The next ring, we talked about business liberty, and I talked about the value of entrepreneurship. I shared how, as an entrepreneur, you have almost total freedom to do anything you want, the total freedom to live your days as you want to live them, to control your time, which is one of the most powerful forms of freedom.

Entrepreneurship gives you control over your days. It gives you freedom of association, the ability to work with people that you work. It gives you freedom of purpose, the ability to create businesses that you believe are valuable. And how, if you're an entrepreneur, you already experience almost total freedom while you're building up money to experience that level of financial freedom.

Then, in ring number six, I talked about freedom, state liberty, freedom from government. I talked about how, if you'll put together a lifestyle and you'll be strategic about the governments that you choose to ally yourself with, then you can really build probably the most freedom of lifestyle that's been possible throughout human history.

I talked with you about how the secret to accomplishing that is not to try to choose one government that's the best in the world at everything. It doesn't exist. But to choose multiple governments and to work with each government where each government is really the best and to choose to put yourself under governments only strategically and that how governments don't respect their individual citizens, but they do respect other governments.

So, if you can put one government against another government, you really open up tremendous opportunities for yourselves. We talked about state liberty. And then, in ring number seven, we talked about financial liberty, true financial freedom where you have so much wealth and so much income coming in that you'll never spend the money.

For the rest of your life, you never have to make your decisions based upon the money itself. For the rest of your life, you're genuinely and truly free of the need to earn money. And what a luxury that is, and yet how ultimately and eminently attainable it is for all of us.

Now, in this show, I want to cap off this particular series, though, with a comment on what do you do after you're free? Because if you actually look at the details and you think about what it means, what freedom really means, you don't have to wait. And the lesson I want to impress upon you right now is that you don't have to wait for years and years and years in order to experience this lifestyle of freedom.

You can have it now. You don't have to wait. Now, the whole point of the series was to demonstrate to you that you don't have to wait until you're ultimately financially free, until you're a multimillionaire and financially independent, in order to experience the freedom of lifestyle. But today, I want to hammer that home by talking about what you will actually do when you've reached all of these stages.

The only one of these stages that I haven't personally reached yet is that financial liberty. I don't yet have enough money to live purely on the income from my investments. I think someday I will, and I'll report back to you. It's certainly a goal that I have. I'll report back to you what that's like when I achieve that goal.

But when I reflect on it, and when I talk to lots and lots of people who have already achieved that goal, what I realize is you don't need to achieve it in order to live well. You can live well now if you will break these chains in your thinking.

So let's talk about what you're going to do when you've reached this. Pretend that you have this almost total freedom that I described to you. You're spiritually free. You're at peace with God and with yourself. You're not a slave to any addictions or substances. You have freedom of association.

You have freedom with your family. You can come and go. You have enough money where you can come and go. You're not worried about the future. You have income sources that are sufficient to supply your needs. You're even free of different governments. You make your way around the world.

What are you going to do? Well, you're still going to have to get up every day and do something with your life. I love to ask the question when I help people do financial planning, and we talk about financial independence. I talk to them and I say, "Listen, what you need to start with is by saying, 'What would you do if you inherited $10 million?

What would you do if a rich uncle died and left you $10 million tax-free? What would you do?'" Well, I think the things that most of us would do are fairly common. The first thing is we would have some fun, some kind of hedonistic pursuit or endeavor that we really would enjoy engaging in.

That hedonistic pursuit might be as simple as taking a vacation. Maybe you take your children to Disney World. For some people, they've never had the chance to do that, and that would be something they would really, really look forward to. Your hedonistic pursuit of fun might be much bigger.

You might buy a helicopter and learn how to fly, or you might finally go ahead and sign up for that NetJets membership so you can jet all around the world on private flights and finally kiss commercial flying goodbye. Maybe you would go and travel around the world for a year.

You might do it as a backpacker, or you might do it in style. Most of us have some kind of hedonistic enjoyment pursuit that we would really enjoy doing, those things that are on our bucket list. So we would do some of those things. You would probably do something to upgrade your circumstances of your life to some degree.

For example, you might finally replace the back deck. It's been rotting and bothering you and you just haven't gotten around to it, but because you got $10 million, you would call the contractor and say, "Listen, I want a big, beautiful deck here. I want this thing to be really nice and I want it to be stocked," or maybe put in a nice backyard cooking station.

You might upgrade your car. Maybe you don't really love your car, but you think, "If I got a new car, that would be really nice." There would be some kinds of consumption items that you would buy. You might upgrade your house. You might upgrade your phone. You might upgrade your wardrobe, something like that.

But then we would get to some of those things that you would want to do if they freed up more time. Maybe you would tell yourself, "If I only had all the time in the world and I didn't have to work, then I would finally get in shape," or "Then I would finally learn Spanish," or "Then I would finally write that book." Now, maybe you would, maybe you wouldn't.

I think a lot of times we fool ourselves when it comes to those kinds of pursuits. But most of us do have some things that if we just had a little more time, then we could make more progress. What you see is often if you study people who retire, if they're retiring intentionally, they often will start to do some of those things when their time is freed up.

But here's the reality for most of us. Pretend that you had all the money in the world. Pretend you retired. Pretend you took a year to travel the world or take your children on a cruise or go camping and hike the Appalachian Trail. Fast forward a year. You've done that stuff for a good, solid year.

Pretend that you've upgraded the things in your life that you really wanted to upgrade. You bought some nicer, fancier stuff. Well, what are you going to do then? Because what's going to happen is you're still going to wake up on Monday morning, and you're still going to have to do something.

You're still going to wake up on Wednesday and have to do something. It's going to be Wednesday, May 6, 2020, at 1:44 p.m. as I record this, and you're still going to have to do something. And those some things that you're going to want to do in those situations are probably the same kinds of things that matter to you now, except possibly with a slightly less intense focus on finances.

You're still going to care about the people that you spend time with. You're still going to care about the amount of love in your life. You're still going to care about service towards other people. You're still going to care about your daily activities. You're still going to need to spend the day in some way that you care about.

And what I think most people overestimate is how fulfilling consumption or just frivolity and fun really is. I was very fortunate that I learned this lesson when I was in high school, and I had two jobs in high school that fundamentally altered how I viewed work. To back up, one of the first more adultish jobs that I had-- I had a number of different jobs, lots of jobs when I was in high school-- one of the first adultish jobs that I had was in seventh grade, I got a job working as a helper for a tile setter.

And I was working on the tile crew, and I was just a helper, which means I carried boxes of tile or I mixed up mud. I grouted floors. It was about as technically proficient as I got. I never got to the point of actually laying out a beautiful floor.

But what I learned very quickly was how hard that work really was. I also learned how, if I worked hard, I could earn a lot of money, because I earned a lot more money than most seventh graders really did. I earned a lot more money than most people who were in that situation earned because I put myself in a situation where I was productive, because I worked hard.

But still, I realized that it wasn't really for me. I would get to the end of the week, and even when I was seventh grade, my back would hurt because of leaning over and scrubbing a floor or grouting a floor. And I realized, man, this is really tough work.

Well, fast forward a little while later, a few years later, I had a different job. And this job was an office job. And I was hired to do some basic kind of office-type work, but unfortunately, there wasn't as much work for me to do as we ultimately thought there was going to be.

Unfortunately, I put myself in a situation where I had a job and I had an income, but there wasn't a lot to do. They were overstaffed. And so I would come into work every day with a book. Now, I loved to read. I still love to read. And I would come in every day with a big, thick novel, a nice Tom Clancy book, an 800-page novel, and I would just sit and read all day.

But after a few days and a few weeks of this, I was done. And for me, this would have been my dream job. You're telling me that I can just sit around and read all day, every day, read novels, and my boss knows about it, and I'm getting paid for it?

This is a dream job. But I was completely and totally done after a very short amount of time. I realized there's something about reading when it's a rest from work that makes it special. But when reading, especially fluffy reading, right, novels, reading for fun, is all you do, you quickly are bored by it.

Now, a couple years later, I had a different job. And in this job, I got a job teaching wakeboarding and water skiing to children. And so I was part of a summer camp, and my job was basically running, being a staff member at the summer camp. And all day, I would show up to work in a pair of board shorts and a pair of flip-flops.

I would take kids out on the boat, and I would teach them to wakeboard, water ski. I'd drive the boat. Now, in many circumstances, you would say this is the dream job, right? Totally comfortable, totally relaxed. It's a lot of fun. Some of the children were older. Some of them were teenagers.

But all I got to do is drive a ski boat. A lot of people desperately look forward to their ski vacations when they are saying, "Okay, I can finally go out on the lake." They're desperately looking forward to the opportunity to finally get out on the water. And I could ski and wakeboard any time I wanted.

By the end of the first summer doing that, I was bored stiff because there was no real opportunity for me to grow. I was doing the same thing over and over and over again. And over the years, what I've noticed for me is that that's kind of a recurring--a recurrence.

For me, the things that I really dislike about many jobs are when I wind up in a situation where I don't have the chance to grow. When I was a mainstream financial advisor, my biggest frustration with that job was I was having the same conversation over and over and over and over and over again.

And I was always trying to find some new and interesting area to study and new clients to go after so I could expand my intellectual engagement with the world, but doing the same thing over and over and over again, it didn't matter the money. What mattered was there was an opportunity to grow.

But I've noticed this is the same with many other people. Now, maybe not everybody. Maybe not. It has seemed to me that there are people who are totally comfortable doing the same thing day after day after day after day, that they're just completely relaxed and at ease without a lot of change in their life.

Who am I to say what's right for anyone else? Who am I to say what someone else has to do with their life? I don't know. All I know is that's not me. And most likely that's not you either. Because if you're sitting here engaging with a program like Radical Personal Finance, we're not entry-level stuff.

Most people do not have the ability to stay with one argument for 17 minutes and 52 seconds. Most people have checked out after 60 seconds, if that. And so the fact that you're here indicates you're not probably that kind of person. And so the dreams of that kind of person probably just don't resonate with you.

They don't resonate with me. I can't help that kind of person. But I'll tell you, because you're here, I know you're the kind of person who's much more engaged with life and is much more engaged with work, with contribution, with meaning than most other people. And that won't change when you're financially independent.

That won't change when you can travel anywhere in the world that you want to travel. That won't change when all of a sudden you can do anything you want. You'll still crave that sense of contribution, that sense of purpose, that sense of meaning. And you will need to build a lifestyle that engages with that.

And I am convinced the most effective way to build that kind of lifestyle is going to be to keep work in your life. I think one of the worst things that you can do is to withdraw from work, to put yourself in a situation where, "Yeah, I used to do this and that.

I used to engage with all these things, but now I don't. Now I'm just relaxed and retired." This is a real mistake. One of the most important things that you can do is to stay engaged with life and to stay engaged with work. Now, the cool thing that would be different if you were financially independent is you would put yourself in a situation where you get to define your work environment.

But I hope you noticed what I just said. Because if that's where you would be when you're financially independent, why not do it now? Why not do it now? And that's where, when you think about all the things that I talked about, when we talked about freedom from debt, when I talked about entrepreneurship, you have the ability to do all that stuff now.

Right now, as I record this show, I'm sitting in a beautiful garden. I try to come up with, especially now that I'm doing a video of Radical Personal Finance, I try to come up with an interesting thing for you to look at while you listen. But I'm sitting in a beautiful garden.

Doubt me if you're listening to this through the audio. Come on by youtube.com/radicalpersonalfinance. Find the episode of today's show and you'll see it. Here I am in a beautiful garden doing work that I care about, seeking to help you, to encourage you, to speak to you, which I would do for free, even if I were totally financially independent.

I would still do it. Now, I've asked myself a lot of questions. Would I still do it as much as I do it? I don't know. I'll report back when I'm financially independent. But I'll tell you this. In business, you can completely manufacture reality to fit your world, to fit any way you want.

And it's the same with life in almost every dimension. Right now, you and I, right now, you and I experience more freedom in our lives than almost anybody throughout human history. Now, I'm not blind to the ways that freedom is eroded. I'm very open about my desire for freedom.

I get very frustrated when people want to try to come and take freedom away. But what I have noticed is that the more that I just simply live as a free person and start to do all of the tactical things that I talk about here practically every day, the less I care about what they say, what they do.

Their rules are--I don't mean for this to sound as snarky and as arrogant as it does, but the rules are for someone else. You can--if I don't like them, I just go somewhere else. Now, I'm not murdering people, right? There's an ethical layer, which is why we started with spiritual liberty.

When I made the comment about spiritual liberty, I talked about how the very first level of discipline is to bring yourself under self-control, to be freed from those demons so that you can live an upright and moral life. But in that situation, you basically have all the other freedoms.

And at this point, I just don't see any reason to wait. At this point in time, I don't see any reason why any of us should wait to build the kind of life that we don't want to retire from. Most of the restrictions that we're under, most of the things that we think are an obstacle, are all in our head.

They're all in your head. And once you're freed from those restrictions and you realize how incredibly free the world is and how incredibly abundant your options are, it's a little overwhelming, frankly, at times, but it's stunning. You don't have to wait. And that, to me, was kind of the blinding revelation of what I've learned over the last six years as I have done radical personal finance.

When I started this show, I was focused on the financial solutions. And I saw glimly how if you did a few basic financial things, it would lead to more financial independence. But I thought money was the key. I thought money was the magic necessary ingredient. It's not that money doesn't matter.

It certainly does. But it's not the magic necessary ingredient. What's needed if you care about freedom is the right mindset, the right understanding of the world, some basic tactics. You may need to work. For example, maybe you're deeply in debt. Well, you can't just walk away. I guess I shouldn't say you can't just.

Some people just say, "Well, that's it. I'll walk away." People who are buried in one country under a mountain of debt, they just walk away and go to a different country and start over again. I guess there's probably a time and a place to do that. But I'm talking within a proper ethical constraint.

I'm not crazy, and I think we should always do the right thing, even whether the law allows it or not. But generally, that period of pain, that period of work is relatively short. Maybe right now you're waking up during an economic crisis, and you're saying, "I cannot afford all the money that's flowing out of my life.

I've got bills everywhere. I've got all this stuff, and I am completely and utterly trapped." Well, it might take you a month or a couple of months to sell all your stuff, to change, to move from an expensive living situation to another. It might. But a few months from now, you can be in a radically different situation.

As I've talked about when we talk about budgeting, the best recommendation I would have for you is make some radical lifestyle change that makes all that stuff easy, because that solves the emotional problem. You're trapped in here. You're a victim of your own affluence and your own success because you've used it to establish a lifestyle.

And it's not that you couldn't cut all that stuff off. It's not that you couldn't dramatically change your expenses. You could. You could move from a big expensive house with a million-dollar mortgage into a cheap little apartment today. You could. But you're stuck in your head. What will my friends think in terms of your reputation?

What will my friends think? What will my family think? Now, you could just kind of be a master of that and say, "I'm not going to care. I'm going to just get over it." That would be one solution, and some people are able to do that. Or you could find another solution.

This is the time. Sell the house. Pack up your suitcases. Go travel around the world for a year, whatever your version of that is. Maybe go and retreat to a monastery to find yourself. Go spend a year living an ascetic lifestyle in a monastery. Find something that you're willing to engage in that has the side benefit of getting rid of all the payments.

That might be one solution. But we're all going to want just about the same things. You're going to want to do work that matters. You're going to want to make a contribution to society. You're going to want to experience love and love others. You're going to want to be loved and love others.

You're going to want some creature comforts. There's a real lifestyle upgrade from sleeping on the floor versus sleeping in a bed. Some people believe there's health benefits sleeping on the floor. Maybe so. I like sleeping in a bed. I don't like to be cold at night. I don't like to be rained on.

So there's a basic level of comfort that we all need. But you're already there, right? It's crazy talk to even talk about that stuff. You can have that with a $100 Walmart tent, a $20 blow-up air mattress. Now, we're not at that level of advancement. But all the stuff that you're struggling with, all the stuff that I'm struggling with, it's all in your head.

And if you'll recognize that, and you'll recognize what you would want after you became financially independent, you can just go ahead and skip the whole process. And that, for me, is the revelation that I did not expect from these last five years of work. I thought when I started this, I thought, "Okay, I want to create a business that I'll want to care about, that I'll want to do.

I want to create a business that has the opportunity for me to grow, for me to adjust into different things, so I don't have to have the same conversation every single day of personal finance 101 or life insurance 101." Then I started doing it, experiencing some success. And then I realized what the business bought me was a huge level of freedom.

Freedom of time, freedom of association, financial freedom, freedom of purpose, the ability to create my stuff how I wanted to do it, how I wanted to say without asking somebody else for permission. And when I started, I had a very intense bunch of financial goals. Then I realized that although I see value in financial goals, it wasn't necessary to achieve them to experience the level of lifestyle freedom that I was working towards.

I didn't expect that. I didn't expect that. What I learned from coaching others, from talking to others, is that that's often a common experience. You start off thinking that what you want is financial independence. You start off thinking that if I could just have enough money, then I'll be totally free.

And what you realize is, no, I wouldn't have to wait. One of my favorite kinds of articles to read is where someone who is a personal finance blogger, a financial independence blogger especially, someone who's retired early says, "If I lost it all, here's what I would do over again." Love those articles.

And any time you find one, what you'll find, at least I shouldn't make an absolute statement like that, it seems to me that when I read those articles, a common refrain that I find is people would not put themselves into bondage again just in order to achieve financial independence.

Now, they would still live frugally. They would still pursue a good income. They might go ahead and take a job that does have more demands upon their time and demands upon their person than if they were financially independent. I think that there are certainly people who, if they love traveling around the world, if they're financially independent, they might go ahead and say, "It's really efficient for me to go back into a six-figure corporate job." But they wouldn't put themselves into slavery just to achieve financial independence because it's not necessary.

There are tactics and techniques that will lead to independence, and I've covered those in these Rings of Freedom. But what would I do if I went broke? I would do what I talked about in this show. I would layer in all the other financial--sorry, in this series. I would do what I talked about in this series, and I would layer in all the other good financial planning.

I would layer in asset protection, so if I went totally broke, I would still come out with money that I could start again. It's a lot easier to make things happen when you have money. But I would never go back into a place of slavery. I often joke with my wife, but it's not a joke.

But I would point out to her all the businesses that I would do instead of going back into the corporate environment. I'd point out to her the food truck, or I'd point out to her I'd keep a list of Internet businesses and digital businesses because there's so much value in a good digital business.

It buys you a huge level of freedom and independence that almost nothing else--it's more attainable than almost anything else. But at the end of the day, I wouldn't just put everything on hoping that someday you'd have money. It's the single biggest regret that I have about when I was a traditional financial advisor in years past.

I would talk to people, and in hindsight what I can identify is that they would always leave my office more discouraged, often more discouraged than they would come in. And I would sit down and I would say, "You've got to have more money. You've got to stack up more money.

Look, you're behind on your retirement savings." They were behind on their retirement savings, but they were stinking rich. They just didn't have anybody who could translate that into what that meant for them. So here's my point. You're going to want, after you're financially independent, the same things that you want today.

You're probably going to want to do the same things that you want to do today. So why not do them now? Why not skip the whole process of getting rich and go ahead and live rich first while on the path to financial independence? There are some basic decisions that you can make along the way that will help you to achieve that.

If you look at rich people who have their priorities straight, they care about their children, they want time with their children. One of my favorite examples would be Mohamed El-Erian. He was formerly a big wig at PIMCO Funds. He was an incredible investment manager, and he quit a number of years ago.

He left PIMCO, and he retired from that business because he wanted to have time with his family. He was sick and tired of getting up at 2 in the morning to follow the Asian markets to be prepared for the open of the U.S. markets. What's interesting is that today, he has a perfectly functional business.

He just does it from home. He goes on Twitter, talks about things on Twitter, appears on news things, writes a little bit, does some consulting. Now, I'm sure he doesn't need to. I'm sure he's totally financially independent, could live on the income from his investments, but he still does it, and he has time with his family, which is what he wanted.

Well, my answer is, that's great for him. I'm glad that he made that decision, but why shouldn't you and I make the same decision? What, just because we don't have $20 million? So what? You don't need $20 million to spend time with your children. What you need is the choice to spend time with your children.

This current time we're in has proven that they can go to school online. No excuse for any of us not to homeschool our children at this point. You've already been forced to, so why not continue it if you want time with your children? You want the time to be more fulfilling?

Well, then build some kind of lifestyle that allows that to happen. But we're all going to want about the same things that we want in the future that we want today. That's the key. There's a lot of commentary about money. People talk about money, and they say, "Well, are rich people bad?" Right?

"Are rich people bad because they're rich?" It's not been my experience. I think what happens is, rich people become a little bit more of what they were before they were rich. It's just amplified by the money. People who were generous before they're wealthy, they're usually generous after they're wealthy.

People who are parsimonious before they're wealthy, they're usually parsimonious afterwards. People who are selfish before, selfish afterward. People who are abusive before, abusive afterward. The money just enables them to live a bigger lifestyle. And so here's the great thing about it. If you're in a situation now where you're free, you're going to be more free when you have more money.

But if you're trapped right now, if you're not living free, you're going to be more trapped when you have more money. At the end of the day, the rules and the structure is all right here. It's all in your head. Now, you can't change what's in your head overnight.

I've read lots of people who've talked about and said, "You know what? If you just change your mindset, everything is fixed." Maybe you can do that, but I've never been able to do that. I've always needed tactics and time. It's always taken me time to change my mindset because I don't want to lie to myself.

Maybe that's a flaw. I often admire those who can just change their mindset evidently in a moment. What I want to encourage you is if you're like me, if that's hard for you, if you do the stuff day by day, if you take the actions, over time that sense of freedom will start to become a part of you.

What I'm sharing with you is a transformation that I didn't expect from the work that I've done in the last five years, but I'm glad it's happened. But it doesn't fire me up to just quit and do more fun stuff. I love to do fun stuff. I love to play, and I'm excited about the big play that I get to do with my family over the coming years.

I am excited. I'm excited even about the expensive play that I can do over the next coming years. I enjoy spending money. It's fun. But I'm more excited about the work than about the play. In the same way that going skiing on the lake is really fun when it's a respite or an after-work activity after a long day of hard work, play of any kind, even big expensive play, is really fun when it's a respite, a rest, after a long week or month of hard work.

Don't expect that financial abundance and financial freedom and achieving that level seven goal is just going to completely change everything. It's not. Will it buy you more opportunities? Yes, it will. I'm convinced you don't need two million bucks to do it. As I talked about in ring number four, where we talked about spending liberty, debt-free and savings, where I talked to you about being debt-free, buys you liberty.

It's hard to really experience that level of liberty when you're in debt. It really is. Having savings, important. The three numbers I went over, remember, $1,000, buys you access to the top 50% of society. $1,000 in the bank, that's it. I don't know what that is on a global basis, probably top 20% of the globe in terms of level of wealth.

$1,000 buys you access to the top 50% of society. Doesn't that seem like kind of a small price to pay to go from the bottom 50% to the top 50%? $1,000. Anybody who sets the goal, works at it, can achieve that. $10,000 is the next level that I've talked about.

$10,000 buys you almost any choice in life that you want. You can go anywhere, do almost anything, adjust to almost anything, and then of course the third level, which was simply $100,000 in the bank. $100,000 in the bank, the world is yours. The only thing you can't do on $100,000 is not work forever, but you can not work for now.

That's your price of financial admission, and you can achieve that fast. The other stuff will all take care of itself. Don't expect that financial independence is going to transform your life. Build a life after financial independence that involves work, that involves connection, that involves service, and then enjoy reaching that milestone of financial independence while you look forward and press on to the next one.

Thank you for listening to Radical Personal Finance. Make sure you subscribe to the show. Subscribe wherever you're watching this now, Facebook, YouTube. If you're listening on the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. Regularly new episodes coming out all the time. If you'd like to support the show, go to patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance.

Support the show on Patreon. That gives you access to the Friday Q&A shows. Going to be coming out with a bunch of new stuff over in the store, radicalpersonalfinance.com/store. New courses coming out in the coming weeks. I'll share with you more details when those are live. Thank you for listening.

Be back with you soon. The holidays start here at Ralph's with a variety of options to celebrate traditions old and new. Whether you're making a traditional roasted turkey or spicy turkey tacos, your go-to shrimp cocktail, or your first Cajun risotto, Ralph's has all the freshest ingredients to embrace your traditions.

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