♪ California's top casino and entertainment destination is now your California to Vegas connection. Play at Yamaha Resort and Casino at San Manuel to earn points, rewards, and complimentary experiences for the iconic Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas. ♪ Two destinations, one loyalty card. Visit yamaha.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 I'm gonna give you part two of my previous language learning podcast, although frankly I wish I had released this show first before the previous show. In part one, I talked about some practical tools to help you with learning your next foreign language, but today I wanna give you some strategy around the use of languages, especially as it relates to your financial opportunities, and I want to share with you a rubric for deciding strategically which languages to learn.

A few of the ideas here at the beginning will be a repetition of some of the ideas discussed in part one, but I think it's still worth your time, so I encourage you to give it a shot. I wanna bring the topic of language learning all the way back to the very beginning.

The mission that I open each show with is helping you to live a rich and meaningful life now while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less. That's what I state at the beginning and opening of every single show, and yet I talk for hours and hours about topics that, in my mind, directly relate to that mission, but they span across basically the whole world, all the topics, and I tie them back to those missions, and that's what I'm gonna do with the topic of language learning, because I believe that language learning is an extremely valuable skill that will help you to achieve that dual-fold mission more effectively, that mission of living a rich life now and building a plan for financial freedom, and I wanna explain to you the path of how you get there so you can see how this applies in so many other areas of life.

Now, first, back to the radical personal finance framework for wealth. All else being equal, we know that one of the best things that you can do to improve your opportunities for financial freedom and to live a richer life now is to increase your income. All else being equal, the higher your income, the better your life is going to be, and the faster you'll achieve financial freedom.

This is true whether you're pursuing a more traditional model of financial independence. Perhaps you're planning to work over the course of a 40- or 50-year career. Well, if you can earn a higher income, you will, of course, generate more money, and you'll be financially free to a higher degree.

It's also true in the shorter-term plans. If you're pursuing an aggressive path to financial freedom, the higher your income, the easier it is. It's much easier to become wealthy with a $500,000-a-year income than a $50,000-a-year income. That should be obvious. However, I believe that the higher income can also lead to a richer lifestyle.

One of the things that I think is underappreciated from those who haven't earned a lot of money is that if you'll just simply increase your earnings substantially, you can do two things simultaneously that often seem at odds with each other. You can live a higher lifestyle, and you can also become wealthier.

Again, perhaps you're earning $50,000 per year. Well, you may be able to save some money on a $50,000-per-year income, but you'll have to be extremely frugal. But if you increase your earnings from $50,000 to $350,000 per year, you can dramatically improve your lifestyle, and you can dramatically increase the amount of savings that you have.

So if we walked away from most of the other parts of technical analysis, and we just focused relentlessly on increasing our income, there's a very good chance that that would help you to live a richer and better life now, while also reaching financial freedom faster. You say, "Joshua, what about so-and-so celebrity "that earned $58 million and now they're broke?" Yeah, that exists.

There are people who are in that situation. So it is important that we talk about expenses and investing wisely, et cetera. But the number one driver is your income. And so it should consume perhaps 80% of our attention, and everything else should be relocated to perhaps 20% of our time and of our attention.

Well, how do you increase your income? How do you build a strong income? My answer to that is you need to develop economically valuable skills. Separately, I teach about those economically valuable skills. In my career and income planning course, I go through the five major ones and talk about how important they are.

And you can apply these in the context of employment, working for another person, another company. You can also apply these in the context of your own business or self-employment. But you wanna develop these financially valuable skills. To put things at the most simple level, you want to develop yourself to be a highly valuable person.

And that's what's at the foundation of a lot of money and career advice that you have received. For example, the traditional path, the first step to developing yourself as a financially valuable person has often been the attainment of educational certifications, finishing your high school degree, getting a college degree.

And those things are helpful, they're valuable. It can be part of a credentialization process. It may even come with knowledge that helps you. And so that can be extremely valuable. And especially in difficult economic times, those additional qualifications stand out as being much more important. For example, I believe that you can make a very strong argument that the economic value of a college degree is overrated.

It's overestimated in the marketplace. However, it is certainly true that as a class, people with college degrees experience significantly lower level of unemployment than people without college degrees. And so when there are times of high unemployment, you look around and you're grateful that you can put on a resume, "Yes, I have a college degree." And the more degrees you have, depending on the field, the better.

And so that's one way of enhancing your attractiveness. But what do you do in a crowded marketplace? What do you do if you're applying for a job and there are a hundred candidates and those 100 candidates all have a bachelor's degree, they all tick that box and say, "Yes, I have a bachelor's degree." Well, you need to stand out because you have to remember that as a job applicant, as an employee, you are always competing against other employees.

One of the most fundamental economic concepts to master and drill and remember and to teach loudly is this, employees do not compete with employers. Rather, employees compete with other employees and employers compete with other employers. So there's no need for antagonism in a free society between employees and employers, but you are going to have to compete with other potential employees who are applying for the same job.

And so thus, you need to stand out. Now, of course, there are many ways of standing out. One way might be a certain academic degree or certification. Another way might be certain professional certifications. Other ways of standing out might be excellent interpersonal skills or excellent work history. But at its core, what you need to do is to develop yourself and develop your skills into a uniquely attractive package.

And this is where languages can come in because if you are competing against one other job candidate and both of you have compelling work histories, both of you interview well, you have good interpersonal skills, you're able to build a sense of amiability and interpersonal connection during the interview process, you have good writing skills or good technical skills, you have the appropriate academic credentials, you need something that's gonna set you apart.

And that's what you're looking for. One of those some things that might set you apart is language skills, the ability to speak or to write or to work in multiple languages. In the previous show, I used the example. I find a lot of job listings available for social media consultants who are bilingual.

And if you're gonna go out and you say, I wanna be a social media manager, excuse me, I meant manager, I say, I wanna be a social media manager, but you only speak English, well, there are jobs available for you and that might be an interesting job. But if you are bilingual in English and Cantonese, now there's a much more unique set of jobs available for you.

There's a much smaller candidate pool. So instead of you're having to compete against thousands of other people, perhaps there's a few dozen people that you're competing against. And the wages that you'll receive for your work are most likely going to be higher. So at its core, languages can provide you with an opportunity to simply earn more money.

But the benefits of being multilingual don't stop there. That is interesting and it is important, but the benefits don't stop there. What about living a rich life? Well, I've always found the topics of intercultural communication and international living fairly interesting. My undergraduate bachelor's degree is actually in international business.

And I've always found the context of international business interesting. That's an interesting wrinkle over the standard day-to-day enjoyment of business. And I've known a lot of people who've been involved in international business. And it can be one way for those who are interested in such a lifestyle, it can be one way for people to enjoy a more interesting and varied career.

Now, for some people, they would prefer not to have a career that involves them going to different countries, being on an airplane, moving to different places. But I think there's probably more people that do like that than not, or at least my guess would be that more of my listeners would be attracted to those things than are not.

Why do I say this? Well, in my experience as a financial planner, when I would talk with people about things like retirement, one of the most common dreams that people have in retirement is to travel more. I like to travel, but I've always enjoyed kind of slower travel. The ability to travel at a different pace than just a whirlwind one week tour of Europe.

And so that's one of the reasons why international business has always attracted me as a person. If I were to take a job and let's say that I took a job and I went and worked for a large multinational corporation, maybe I go and work for Siemens or some global automaker.

Well, if I go and spend five years living and working in Germany, it's now easier for me to access the European continent for my leisure travel than if I have to fly over from New York City all the time. Similarly, I can relocate from Germany to Singapore or to South Korea.

And now I can access all of Asia very, very simply. And perhaps then after that, I go and spend five or seven years living in the UAE. Well, now I have low cost air flights to an incredible portion of the world. And so financially speaking, if you're interested in something like travel, having the ability to work in multiple cultural contexts and to speak multiple languages is obviously valuable.

It can change things for you. Even in the retirement phase, I have openly advocated that internationalization should be considered as a strategy for retirement, as a strategy for many things. Some people recognize that, hey, I can live very well on a lower cost of, on $1,500 a month if I live in Mexico, and I can live better on $1,500 a month in Mexico than I can in the United States.

Or I can live very well in Thailand or the Philippines or Uruguay or some other place that you're interested in. And you genuinely can. But your experience of that lifestyle will be dramatically different based upon your knowledge of the local language. You can live in Mexico and not speak a word of Spanish.

You can live in a gringo English-speaking community and do perfectly fine. I know people that do. But your experience will be dramatically improved if you are fluent in Spanish. And so there are many lifestyle reasons in addition to the personal reasons I discussed in the previous show, things like making you smarter, increasing your mental abilities, pushing off the advent of chronic degenerative diseases like Alzheimer's or something like that.

And it just interesting, opens up a more interesting part of the world. You get to know people better when you can speak their language. And so there are many reasons, but there are very compelling financial reasons that you should consider. Give you just a couple other examples. I've thought about this strategy even in the context of my children.

I'm working, I wanna be cautious about what I say publicly because of course, as a parent, you're looking at your children and trying to discern where their interests are. But my ambition for my children is that they be multilingual. What level of multilingualism do I expect of them? I don't know, I don't know.

In a dream world, they'd speak a half a dozen languages, but I'm not committed to doing the hard work. I think that there comes a point where you can require a certain level of work from a student, but at some point, the student has to actually want something. And even if I wanna speak a dozen languages, I may or may not transfer that onto my children.

And I think that they should be free to make their own choices. But my ambition is that my children be at a minimum bilingual, if not multilingual to some degree. And I'm working hard and investing into them, but with differing levels of results. One of my children has taken naturally to language learning and is doing extremely well, others not so much.

So we'll see as the years go by. But even in terms of my own financial strategy, multilingualism, as far as I'm concerned, is a compelling part of it. I've publicly talked about my distaste for college funds. The standard, you know, US American open a 529 plan. Doesn't mean I'm opposed to paying for college, just means that generally as a financial planner, I think that something like 529 plans are relatively overrated.

But that doesn't mean that education is unimportant. And so I've developed a series of strategies of what would I do if I really wanted my child to go to college, but I couldn't, but I didn't have the money for it. Maybe I just went totally broke and I couldn't pay for it.

And I was the dumb, dumb father who didn't save any money in my kid's college plan and I still got to do it. Well, of course, some of the strategies include them paying for it. Some of the strategies include less expensive degree programs, accredited programs online, or community school, scholarships, all those things I publicly talked about.

But there are even just interesting options with internationalization. So for example, right now, as things, as I record this in June of 2020, if you have a child that wants to go to college, your child can go to college for free in Germany and possibly other European countries as well.

But certainly I know in Germany, Germany wants international students to come and to get a German degree. And so they'll offer zero tuition, access to German universities. And then you may need to provide for some living expenses, but possibly even not theirs, but some level of living expenses is appropriate.

And sometimes those are defrayed by the university as well. What are the requirements though? Well, the child's gonna have to have at least a basic level in German. And so if I instruct my children in at least basic German and open up the opportunity, now they can go to Germany, get a highly regarded university degree from a German university, and it can save me a ton of money.

So there are all kinds of little examples like that where foreign language acquisition can be helpful for your finances, for your family finances. This even ignores international tax planning. I've spoken extensively about international tax planning. One of the best things that you can do, if you can arrange it in your financial planning is to be an international person.

And so for US Americans who wanna go abroad and work abroad, you can go and you can work abroad. You can often earn a higher level of income. You may work in a tax haven and get a favored tax status that allows you to earn a higher level of income and save more money and speed up your path to financial independence.

If you are involved in banking, international banking, well, you can go and you can live in Dubai and be an international banker in Dubai. You can go and live in Singapore or many other places around the world and have a much more efficient tax life by engaging in that kind of career.

Now, do you need to speak anything except English to be an international banker in Dubai? Perhaps not, but being proficient in Arabic is certainly gonna help you. Or perhaps working for a mutual fund. One of my dream jobs when I was younger, on my job list was I wanted to be an analyst, but an in the field analyst for an international mutual fund.

So I thought it'd be really fun to go and work for, I don't know, a big mutual fund company, maybe like an American Funds or something like that, and work in their Asian investment fund. And I'd be the in the field analyst. And I pictured myself traveling all around Asia, doing on the ground research on these companies and trying to figure out where the opportunities were.

To me, that kind of thing sounds like a dream. Super interesting to me, super fun, and would take advantage of my skills, my interests, cross-cultural communications, the challenges that come with that, the fun that comes with it, and mixing kind of the business kinds of things. So perhaps a career like that might be interesting to you.

Those are some of the financial reasons for you to consider. Now I wanna pivot and say, let's assume that you are persuaded that there is value in learning a language. What language do you learn? How do you answer that? And here I'm gonna do a balancing act, because the answer is you should learn any language that you actually wanna learn.

Because the most important factor in language learning and your ability to learn a language is desire. Bar none, that is the single most important factor. If you desire to learn a foreign language, you'll figure out how to do it, you'll find the tools and you'll make it happen. All around the world, there are hundreds of millions of people who are students who are forced to study a foreign language.

For those without desire to learn that language, it's a frustration, an annoyance, and a waste of time. They go and take two years of Spanish, or two years of French, or two years of English, or whatever it is, and they come out at the other side, and they check the box, they get their high school degree because they did their foreign language studies, but they don't speak the language.

They can't take on even a basic conversation. They can say bonjour, and that's about it. But for those who want to learn it, and who are motivated, those language classes can simply provide them with a foundation that opens up the world of that language to them. So if you want the short version, you should just simply study a language that you care about.

But what if you're a little bit more strategic? What if you're interested in choosing things strategically? And this has been, for me, my motivation a lot of times with language learning. I've never been drawn particularly to a small language group for one specific reason. My personal interests have always been more strategic.

I think strategically, and even most of my goals are often strategic goals. They're driven by a sense of strategy. I know that's uncommon, but I'll tell you the strategy in case that's also you. But if you, you know, there's a Haitian girl that lives next to you and you say, she's really beautiful, I'm interested in her, and that gives you the motivation to learn Creole, go for it, right?

You engage with something that's interesting to you. But what are some of the strategic factors that you can consider? Number one should, of course, be that. What interests you? If you're a Sinophile, you're deeply interested in China, well, okay, then engage with the Chinese culture. You're gonna be much more strategic.

You're gonna be interested in it because you want it. And so that should be your primary foundation, what you actually are interested in. Maybe you really love the beach and you see your path to living on the beach is running a surf shop on the beach in Brazil. Well, Brazilian Portuguese, boom, go for it.

That should be really important. Moving past that, and don't let my brief treatment of it cause you to think it's unimportant, just that that's gotta be your number one thing. But what about bigger strategy? I think one of the biggest things you should consider is where you actually like to be, where you actually enjoy going, or where you might actually want to live.

Now, forgive me, I skipped past the, well, let me not, sometimes my brain gets ahead of my mouth. Where do you wanna go? Where do you want to live? Let's say that you are married to a Filipino woman and your financial independence plan involves your moving in retirement to the Philippines and living in an inexpensive but gorgeous house on a little tropical island.

Well, if you wanna go and live in the Philippines, then of course, studying Tagalog or Sabuano or whatever local dialect is appropriate for you would be your priority because you want to go and live there. And it would, again, it's very important if you wanna go and live in a certain place to be able to speak the local language.

I have done a lot of work in the United States with Spanish speakers. And when linguists or analysts are dividing the Spanish-speaking population in the United States, they often will differentiate between what are called acculturated Spanish speakers and unacculturated Spanish speakers. An acculturated Spanish speaker is somebody who perhaps they grew up speaking Spanish in their home, perhaps Spanish is their mother tongue, but they went to school in English, they learned English and they're able to speak English effectively.

Well, they're going to be part of, they're kind of this dual culture world where they're Cuban culturally or Mexican culturally, but they're fully acculturated into the broader English-speaking American culture. That's very different than an unacculturated Spanish speaker. An unacculturated Spanish speaker might be a recent immigrant or somebody who's a poorer immigrant.

Your Cuban grandmother who just lives in Miami and only speaks Spanish with the Cuban, only hangs out with Cubans and Spanish speakers and has no need to learn English, no desire to learn English. Or a recent day laborer, recently immigrated from Guatemala or Mexico or El Salvador and they haven't been able to learn English yet.

Well, those people are unacculturated. And having worked in these communities, I just have time and time and time and time again seen how limited the opportunities are for somebody who is an unacculturated Spanish speaker in the United States. I do everything possible when I speak with unacculturated Spanish speakers in the United States to encourage them.

Your number one job has got to be to learn English. For anybody living in the United States who doesn't speak English, your number one job has got to be to learn English because it opens up the world to you. Well, the same thing obviously happens in reverse. One of the great benefits and blessings and privileges that we as English speakers have is we possess a command of the lingua franca of the world.

Lingua franca simply means the common language, the language that is used. You can go up to the check-in desk, the reception of any hotel or at least any two or three star and up hotel in the world, and you can just simply speak in English with no need to have a clue about the local language and the receptionist will be able to help you and serve you.

It's one of the biggest benefits that we have as English speakers and most of us native English speakers. But if you only speak English, your experience of the local culture is very limited. And you're gonna be financially spending quite a bit of money if your experience of the local culture is if you only speak English.

The ability to speak at least some of the local language will fundamentally transform your opportunities. And especially if you go to places where it's less common, where English speaking is less common. Thinking of places that I've gone, I've traveled a decent amount in Haiti and there was certainly plenty of English speaking, but I spent a lot of time traveling in places that didn't have any English speaking.

And I don't speak Creole yet, but I do speak some basic French and I was able to get along in French. And I remember just simple experiences like figuring out how to negotiate reasonably with guides. One of the things that I hated about Haiti is I felt like I was ripped off on every single corner.

And the ability to argue in French made all the difference in the world to my being able to get a fair price for what I was doing, for my being able to not get ripped off and saved me a good amount of money. And it also allowed me to travel in some unique places that most people don't see.

I remember, this is a little bit of an example, but in Haiti, if you ever go to Haiti, there's a cruise port in Haiti called La Badi where the cruise ships come. And you can come on a cruise ship and you can have a certain experience. But if you go to the same towns, I didn't go to La Badi, but I went to some of the towns nearby, there are some incredible things, just some incredible archeology, like just history and culture.

The thing that most stunned me, there's this incredible rundown palace that was built in Haiti and this incredible fort up on a mountain. The palace is called the Palace of Saint-Souci and the fort is called the Citadel. And it's this incredible thing built in the middle of nowhere, Haiti, that you gotta be a pretty intrepid traveler to go to.

And so I would never have had the confidence to go and travel around Haiti and experience some of the incredible experiences that I had there if I didn't speak basic French, because English was not widely spoken in the places where I went. Now, when I was in Port-au-Prince and staying at the, forget the name of it, the big five-star hotel there, certainly English was all I needed.

But to go out of that, you need something that will work in the local language. And so it changes your transformation. So where do you wanna go? Where do you wanna live? Now, part of this, you need to consider what cultures you fit well with, what cultures you like.

And I think many of us will have, if we're actually honest, we'll have an attraction in a certain direction. Give me an example. I've always found a deep level of comfort in Latin cultures. I grew up in South Florida, lots of friends from Latin cultures. And Latin culture for me is a very attractive culture.

It's a very conservative culture, a very family-oriented culture, very religious culture, heavily Catholic, heavily Christian. And it's always been very comfortable for me. And so there was a natural fit. I could live easily in Latin America and be totally comfortable with it because of more of a cultural familiarity.

I don't have that same feeling with regard to Asia. I enjoy traveling in Asia. Asia is just an incredible place. I enjoy it, but I don't have that same level of cultural connection. Now, part of that, of course, I'm sure, is due to lack of language ability. And so I don't have any ability in any Asian language.

I don't speak Mandarin, I don't speak Cantonese, I don't speak Japanese, I don't speak Korean, I don't speak any of those languages yet. And so I'm aware that perhaps my connection with Latin America is due to having language ability in Spanish and Portuguese rather than an Asian language. But I'm more interested in learning Latin languages than I am Asian languages because of the affinity, the sense of cultural connection.

Which comes first, the language ability or the cultural connection? No idea, no idea. But I do know that for me, it's a higher priority for me to develop skill in Latin languages than it is in Asian languages because I just enjoy the culture more. I'm more naturally motivated there.

I know that I could happily live in Latin America if I ever wanted to, but that's different than Asia. So perhaps it's different for you. Perhaps you really love Thai culture or you really love Japanese culture. Well, then you should study that, obviously, because it's incredibly valuable. Now, what about some of the economic considerations?

I'm convinced one of the great career strategy is to use languages to open up a path forward for you. You can do this in your home country. In the previous show, I talked about the value of speaking Spanish as an American, as a US American. The United States is estimated, right now the United States is the fifth most populous Spanish-speaking country in the world.

I think it's, if my memory is right, correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure the most populous, where there's the country that has the most Spanish speakers in it right now is Mexico, followed by, I think, Argentina, then Colombia, then Spain, and then the United States. The United States, I think, is the fifth most populated country with Spanish speakers.

However, within the next couple of decades, the United States is expected to become the second most populous Spanish-speaking country in the world, and second only to Mexico. Mexico is projected to have a larger population, but in the coming decades, I can't remember, I think it's by 2050, the United States is projected to be the second, the country in the world, the second most, my English is failing me, the country in the world with the second highest number of Spanish speakers.

So if you want the ability to improve your career prospects in the United States, then the ability to speak in Spanish will be very interesting to you, very useful to you. In addition, there might be local cultures. So there are regions in the United States with a lot of Haitian immigrants.

That was in South Florida, there are lots of Haitian immigrants. And so you might wanna pick up Creole because it allows you to work effectively in the Haitian community. Or maybe you live in the Midwest where there's a lot of Somali immigrants, right? So you may study Somali or some other local language that there's a large population, that sets you apart in the local area.

But I think a more interesting strategy for a lot of us, or at least a lot of us who enjoy international relocation, would be to choose a language of a region that you want to actually go to. Because when you leave your home culture and go somewhere else, you have the ability to upgrade your status.

You have the ability to move from an ordinary everyday middle-class person and move more easily into the upper crust, upper class of a local society. I've experienced this many times. There's a huge benefit to being a white man traveling around the world. You can go to many cultures in the world and you can go to the swankiest of hotels, and you can be let right in.

You can gain access to the highest crust of society if you're outside of your home culture. When you're in your home culture, for example, if I'm in the United States, I'm one of about a bazillion. Now, can I, if I really want to gain access to the glitterati, if I really want to engage in the upper crust society, can I do it?

Of course I can. I've had friends who've done this very effectively. They don't move to Washington, DC, don't know a soul, but they're very intentional with their networking. They go to the right places, to the right events, make the right connections, and move their way up into society. You can do that.

For me, it's always been easy in an international context. If I go into the bar at the swanky hotel in any city in the world, any international city in the world, you meet the most remarkable of people and open up the most interesting of conversations. And it very quickly moves you from just an ordinary common person into a unique kind of upper level person.

I've recommended this routinely to a number of people. And so I really think you should consider it. If you're just an average, ordinary person, if you're having trouble distinguishing yourself or setting yourself apart in your home culture, you should very seriously consider becoming an expat because the expat community in almost any country in the world is by definition smaller than the home country.

And so if you, let's say that you are, I don't know, Italian, right? If you're an Italian living in Italy, you're one of about, not a bazillion, but one of several million. It's very hard to set yourself apart. But if you're an Italian and you move to Miami, well, now you're very attractive, right?

You're unique, you're exotic, you're interesting. And if you shore up that basic ethnic difference, or you shore up that basic linguistic difference, and you shore that up with excellence and knowledge and business skills, et cetera, you'll find that the world opens up for you. So if you're a US American living in the United States, then you should seriously consider going somewhere else, somewhere where you'll be exotic, somewhere where you'll be, where you get some benefits for the way that you speak.

You get some benefits for the color of your skin, get some benefits for that. And you can very quickly move yourself into an upper level of society. I even find this interesting from the perspective of changing your cultural identity. If you are part of a mainstream school system, let's say that, I've often thought, let's say that I were the parent of a, I don't know, 13 or 14 year old student.

And that 13 or 14 year old student were really struggling in the local school context. And let's assume that I don't have, the student is actually, let's just say I'm coaching the student. One of the things I would say to the student would be, you should consider just simply dropping out of the place that you're located, drop out of the place where you're bullied, drop out of the place where you're not cool, go through some set of transformation, right?

Start lifting weights, become stronger, get less fat, get a haircut, dress differently or something, and pick yourself up and go to another context and start over, reinvent yourself. Well, that would be obviously decent advice for an open-minded student, because they can move into a new system, start a new social group and start over.

But you can do the same thing as an adult. You can do the same thing. And you could do this within your state. You live in Columbus, Ohio, and you're a loser, life stinks for you, everything is bad, you're surrounded by a bunch of losers. Well, pack the car and move to Chicago and start over and transform yourself along the way.

Get a haircut, change the way you, change the clothes that you wear, change the way that you speak, change the type of people that you build friendships with, change the types of things that you can do, and you can totally reinvent yourself. And it's easier sometimes to do that if you move into another context.

You can do the same thing internationally. So if you're living in Columbus, Ohio, and you are a total loser, and nothing is going well for you, maybe what you do is you study Swahili, right? And you move to Nairobi, and you get yourself a job working with an import-export company doing business in Nairobi.

Well, pretty quickly, I can promise you, especially if you'll be thoughtful and strategic about the way that you present yourself, you can be in the very upper crust of elite society in Nairobi with that move. So consider it. This is especially important, I think, if you are the victim of some form of systematized oppression or discrimination, or if you're in great danger.

Maybe you are part of a stigmatized group. Maybe you're one of the, I don't know, the outcasts, right, lower castes in India. If you move outside of India, and you move to Germany or the United States, if you can figure out how to make that translation, which is tough, right, not easy to immigrate to those places, but you can very quickly leave that cultural baggage behind you.

Maybe you are, right now in the United States, there's all this tremendous racial tension specifically for black people. Perhaps you should consider moving outside of the United States and moving to some place where that black identity is not a problem, maybe it is a problem for you in the United States, and move somewhere where it's better.

There's a YouTube channel that I've watched called, I think it's called the Melanin Files or the Melanated Files, and I'm super interested in it. And I listen to all these black people that live in Asia, and I watched this interview with a professor, a college professor who had spent, had been living in Japan.

He grew up in the United States, then moved to Japan 40 years ago. And he just talked about how he really appreciated his freedom as a black man living in Japan and how for him, it had been a wonderful experience. And so that might be a strategy that is helpful for you.

And I see those kinds of things as really, really useful for you to consider. So if you're attracted in another direction, then consider where you might wanna go where you could become exotic and become sought after instead of being normal or being oppressed or discriminated against. Can be extremely, extremely useful for you.

This can be useful on multiple levels, depending on the kind of discrimination you're facing or depending on the kind of persecution you're facing. Perhaps you're a religious minority in your country of birth. Well, you may not be a religious minority in another place. Perhaps you are, and again, we talked about ethnicity or an ethnic minority.

You might be celebrated in another place because of your exotic ethnic identity rather than oppressed because of your ethnic identity. This can come into play with even with regard to age. I think of someone like, I don't know, I think of the climate activist, Greta Thunberg, right? Now, of course, she, I think, is somewhat celebrated in her home culture, but here's this young woman, right?

Is she a teenager yet? Very young woman who on the international stage is this incredibly popular, adored figure on an international stage, but if she were to go to her local hometown and spend time there, she's just, hey, the little girl next door. And so you may be able to use that to your benefit if you're suffering age discrimination for your youth or even for your age.

You can, let's say you're an intelligent, retired 65-year-old. Well, maybe the United States wants to brush you aside as being over the hill, but you can take that same identity and you can move into another culture and you may be celebrated for your age and respected and honored for your age instead of discriminated against for your age.

So if you're facing something like that, consider is there a strategy of relocation? Is there somewhere that I can go that would allow me to be celebrated for who I am, become an exotic, attractive, person of special value instead of just a commodity? Might be very, very useful for you.

What are some other factors that you should consider specifically with regard to the finances of it? Well, here, I wanna give you some things I learned when I was researching this a while ago. I stumbled upon a report from the United Kingdom and the report is called "Languages for the Future, "The Foreign Languages the United Kingdom Needs "to Become a Truly Global Nation." This is put out by the British Council.

And thus far, there are two versions of this report. They first published the report in 2013 and then in 2017, they updated the report, especially in light of a post-Brexit vote. And the basic idea is the British Council is the UK's international organization for cultural relations and educational opportunities.

So the British Council is active all around the world to promote British culture and British engagement. They do English language tests all around the world and various cultural forms of outreach run international schools, et cetera. And I really liked the report because the report was very strategic in how it laid out what international languages UK citizens would need.

Now, I've not found a similar version of this from the United States, it might exist, but I thought this was good. And the huge benefit that you and I have is being English speakers. The obvious first, second language that anybody who is not an English speaker would want to learn would be English.

And that's where you and I have a huge leg up being English speakers or being native English speakers, many of us. It gives us a tremendous headstart on the world when you speak the world's lingua franca by its definition, but naturally or with less effort. It's a tremendous privilege on a global basis.

If you are not, if you don't speak English, that would of course be your first, second language. No matter where you in the world you are, no matter what you do, English is the current international language of business. English is the current international language of diplomacy. English is the current international language, the most influential language in the world.

It's the fastest growing language in the world, both in terms of number of speakers and in terms of the lexicon of the English language. It's the largest language in the world with the most words. English has a bigger lexicon than any other language in the world, and it's the fastest growing lexicon in the world.

And so being an English speaker and being a fluent English speaker would be without question the highest priority for anybody who didn't speak English. But of course you're listening to this podcast in English, so you of course do speak English. So where do you go? What do you do next?

Well, I like the way that this report from the United Kingdom laid out some of the points of analysis, because for me, these points of analysis have always been, they've been my areas of focus for my personal languages. For me, the biggest factor has always been, where do the most people speak it, and who am I around?

I don't deny that you should start with the language you're interested in. If you're really interested in Tamil as a language or Punjab, right, Punjab or Punjabi as a language, then you would study that because you're interested in it. But for me, I've always had this dream of being able to travel around the world and speak the most spoken languages.

And although English is the global lingua franca, there are of course languages that are going to be regionalized languages. And so a language like Russian is very influential around the former Soviet Union, even if the local language is different than Russian, or Spanish is very influential. French, the lingua franca of the world before English is extremely useful.

Tremendous numbers of French speakers all around the world. You can use it in Africa, you can use it in the Caribbean, you can use it in, a little bit in South America, you can use it all across Europe. It's just a tremendously useful language. But for me, strategically, this is where you might wanna consider, especially if you're interested in expanding your employment opportunities, your income opportunities, perhaps even your business opportunities.

You wanna go and make investments in foreign countries, or you wanna run a highly profitable international business. These languages are languages that you should consider. And this method of analysis is a method of analysis that you should consider and apply to your local country, to your local opportunities. A quick note on entrepreneurship.

In my travels around the world, I've become convinced that one of the most reliable ways of building a fortune is simply to take a concept, a business, a profession that has been successful in one region of the world, and take that to another region of the world and expand it.

You can, if you are from Germany, you can look around the German culture and you can find businesses that have been very effective and you can take those to other places. Now, these may be bigger businesses. When I was in college, I considered taking a job with a cell phone company that was working in Africa, and they were expanding all around Africa.

I had a friend who was working for them, and I thought it was interesting. I chose not to do it at the time, but that was a phase at which, if I went and worked with a global telecom provider, they were just expanding massively around the world. I don't know if there are still opportunities in the telecom space, but I guarantee you there are opportunities in the real estate space.

I've had several friends of mine who've been real estate agents in the United States, and I've told them, I said, "Listen, "you need to simply leave the United States, "go to a place that you think you would enjoy doing, "and take some of the practices "and some of the standards "of the real estate business in the United States, "which is highly developed, "and take those into the local context." Just simply doing a good job with online listings and doing really excellent photos and providing really good customer service.

You could set yourself apart and build an extremely successful real estate brokerage that could be national in scope. Take a highly successful model, take a Keller Williams, and just go and take that concept to another country that doesn't have a large national real estate brand, and focus on building that, and figure out what are the cultural factors that you can cross over, and what do you bring that's good from an American model, and then what do you pick up that's good from the local culture, and establish it.

And those opportunities are all around the world. So, having these language abilities is extremely useful. Now, I'm just gonna summarize this report for you, because they give a number of different factors. First, I'll tell you what the factors are. I'll tell you the top languages from this report, and then I'll briefly discuss what these factors are, because these are factors that you can apply to your country.

Perhaps you're listening to me in Germany. Well, you can do this analysis for you in Germany, different than the United Kingdom, or any country in the world. So, here are the factors that this report goes into. There are three broad organizing themes. Number one is economic factors. Number two is non-market factors.

And then number three, balancing factors. So, the economic factors are, in this case, again, this report coming from the UK, the current UK exports. And specifically what this means is the countries that the United Kingdom has the closest trading relationship with. And this would be something that would be worth your looking into.

What country does your home country, or your country of residence, have the closest trading opportunities with? And you should look at that. Number two would be the language needs of, in this case, UK businesses, but for your local country. What are the language needs of businesses? What do businesses say, this is who we're looking for?

Are they looking for a Polish speaker? Are they looking for a Hindi speaker? Number three is future trade priorities. So, what regions in the world is that country trying to build trade? If you're living in the United States, you would not be trying to learn Farsi for the benefits of trading opportunities.

Farsi, of course, the language from Iran. And although Iran has a huge population and has possibly tremendous economic potential, because of the very difficult relationship between Iran and the United States, that's not something where you would expect to necessarily get a job, unless, I guess, you wanna be involved with, be a spy, work for the CIA, or something like that.

Number four economic factor is emerging high growth markets. So, which markets are growing the fastest? Now, what about the non-market factors? Here, there are four of them, diplomatic and security priorities. Again, where are the priorities of this country? What countries in the world is your country trying to strengthen ties with?

Because those ties may start with diplomacy, but business ties are quickly going to grow. What countries is your country trying to build stronger business ties, negotiate trade agreements, et cetera, with? Next would be the public's language interests. Is this language growing because it's of popularity? Here, you would look at a language like, say, Spanish, which has, what, something like 500 million speakers around the world.

You would say that this is a very popular language all around the world. It's growing in popularity. It's a very active second language. And you would compare that to a language that's dying. I don't know, maybe Maltese, right? Maltese is an interesting language, but it's not spoken outside of Malta.

And in Malta, it's not a big priority compared to the widespread use of English or other languages. I think, what, half a million speakers of Maltese and probably dying in terms of its overall influence. So, the public's language interests. Number three, non-market factors, outward and inward tourism. Where are their ties?

Where are their connections for you? Number four would be international educational engagement. And then the last two are the balancing factors, levels of English proficiency in other countries, and then the prevalence of different languages on the internet. So, let's talk about what the UK's list of 10 languages are.

And here they are. Number one is Spanish. So, the British Council would encourage you that if you're interested, sorry. The British Council would encourage policy makers in the UK to deeply emphasize Spanish as a foreign language. And their reasoning, if it's sound, would be good reasons for you to consider Spanish as a foreign language.

This is true in the United Kingdom. I think this would especially be true in the United States. Unless you simply have no interest in Spanish at all, it's hard to see why, if you are US American, why Spanish wouldn't be your first, second language. Because there are so many speakers of it available, and because the United States ties with Spanish-speaking countries are incredibly high.

Obviously, Mexico, all of Latin America, and there are so many Spanish speakers, immigrants to the United States, that Spanish would be obvious. Number one would be Spanish. Number two would be Mandarin Chinese, the official language of China, the national language. Of course, there are many local dialects, but Mandarin Chinese would be the number two language that UK speakers would encourage other people to learn.

And I think that this would be obvious for many people. Because of the massive population of China, because of the economic clout of China, I think many people see the value of learning Mandarin Chinese. Among the hoity-toity, kind of upper-level elite in the United States, Mandarin Chinese is certainly a high priority.

Number three is French. Classic language, that would be the United Kingdom's, the British Council's encouragement for language to consider. Number four is Arabic, and the number five are German. And so they've assigned a points margin for these things, and those five are the clear winners. Now, you could speak all five of them if you're interested in it.

Spanish, if you're an English speaker, Spanish, French, and German will be your easiest languages to learn in terms of the amount of time. Maybe not to learn well, some complex conjugations in those languages, but you'll have the most cognates across those languages. So you can learn Spanish, French, and German.

I find that for me, when I learn Spanish, I can go over as an English speaker with a very broad vocabulary, and as a Spanish speaker with a pretty decent vocabulary, I can go to French and I can read 90% of French without the need to do anything, maybe a little bit more than 90%.

Good connection over to German. Mandarin and Arabic, of course, much more distant from English and the Romance languages, but certainly very doable. Now, the next five languages are Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Japanese, and Russian. So again, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Japanese, and Russian. Having very high benefits for UK residents to learn to speak those, and I'm talking specifically economic benefits to increase trade, increase job opportunities, et cetera.

And then some good runners up would include Turkish, Polish, Malay, and possibly Hindi for the United Kingdom. So there's your list of languages, and perhaps there's one or a few of them that you would consider, but if you are not living in the UK, then you should perform this similar kind of analysis.

Although I mentioned the factors, let me give you the, let me go over them again for you. The economic factors to begin with. Number one is be the current exports from your country to another country. And this would be obvious. If you're gonna go and get a job, let's say you're gonna get a job as a bilingual social media manager.

There's lots of those jobs out there available, but it's gonna be much more, there's gonna be more demand for your services if you're bilingual in a language that your country is exporting a lot of business to. So by this factor, you can just simply look up where does your country trade the most with.

For the United Kingdom, it's the United States, Germany, France, Netherlands, Ireland, Switzerland, Italy, China, the Gulf, and Arab states, Belgium, Spain, Japan, et cetera. And then analyze the languages of those. You don't have to go for the first one if you're not interested in it, but if you're interested in Mandarin Chinese, and China is a very strong trading partner of a company, that's a good sign.

So what are the companies that your country demands? What countries? And also, what's growing? Where is the, what's growing? So for example, in 2017, the British Council Report recommended these languages in terms of being more interesting. German, French, Dutch, Italian, Mandarin, Arabic, Spanish, Japanese, Swedish, and Cantonese. But there was a big change in Swedish.

Swedish became less important in 2017. Major change in other analyses in Portuguese being less important because of the challenges in the Brazilian economy. Similar things with Russian. 2013, Russia was very important, but Russia declined significantly in terms of, it actually dropped off that top 10 list because of the problems in the Russian economy over the last half a decade to the decade.

So do that analysis. Indicated number two, the language needs of businesses of your company. In the United Kingdom, there are, the report looks for a study and they say, okay, what business, what languages do we say that we need? And in this case, the list was French, German, Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic, Polish, Dutch, Japanese, Cantonese, Russian.

But there's a major difference in terms of the demand for French speakers and German speakers than there is for Russian speakers. Third factor, economic factor, is the government's trade priorities. So where are the government's trade priorities? And the way that the British Council analyzed this was to look at the markets identified by the UK Foreign Service for international trade and to identify those specific places.

And it's interesting because this is the area where you get some of these smaller languages that don't often reach the top level, but they are very, very useful. So let's say that your country is trying to build connections in Africa. A good example here, maybe you're living in China and you speak Mandarin Chinese, possibly a local dialect, but you recognize that, and you also speak English, but you recognize that your country, your nation, China, is working very diligently to expand into Africa.

Well, then you would look at a language like Swahili, right? Swahili is the lingua franca of much of Eastern and Southeastern Africa. And so that would be possibly a good language to prioritize or possibly French, which would be more common in Northern and Central Africa. And if you had a specific local area, a specific local dialect that were gonna be interesting to you in a specific country, then of course you would pursue that.

But Swahili wouldn't be on the top 10 list, but it might be for you. So consider that. The top 10, what about indicator number four, emerging high growth markets. So here, the analysis simply, where is growth expected? And I believe that this is an under-discussed area where you can look at regions of the world and you can see where growth is expected for the UK analysis from the Center for Economics and Business Research in the United Kingdom.

They would say that these are some of the 10 regions of the world of the highest growth area. India, India, official languages of India, Hindi and English. Vietnam, language Vietnamese. Ghana, language English. Indonesia, language Bahasa Indonesia or Malay. China, Mandarin. Malaysia, Malay. Thailand, Thai. United Arab Emirates, Arabic. Turkey, Turkish.

Poland and Polish. And so I think that one of the most interesting things you can do with your business, with your investments, is to try to get in front of a macro trend. Try to look at it and say, where is the macro trend? If you were to compare the Vietnamese economy to the UK economy or the US American economy, there's probably a much higher growth potential in the Vietnamese economy than there is the American or the UK economy.

That doesn't mean that there aren't good opportunities in both, but the overall potential of the economy, there's a lot more room for it to run. And so in high growth markets, that might be something really interesting for you to focus on. In the United States, a place like Mexico, right?

There's a lot more growth potential in Mexico than there is in the United States. In Africa, a place like Nigeria, you have this huge population and growing population as compared to the declining population in many of the countries in the West. And so you might want to think about that and figure out where your options are.

So what they do in this analysis is they assign points to those factors, they weight those points, and then they use those to provide a numerical ranking. What about non-economic factors? Cultural, educational, diplomatic, and security factors? Well, you could look at what are the languages that are of priority for diplomacy.

And so in the United Kingdom, they did some interviews and found out that the priority one languages, which are languages of the United Nations, involve Arabic, French, Mandarin, Russian, Spanish. And the priority two languages for UK residents would be Farsi, German, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Turkish. Next indicator would be the public's language interests.

So what languages are the public people most interested in? Here, Spanish, Italian, French, German, Mandarin, Japanese, Arabic, Portuguese, Russian, and Polish. And number seven would be tourism and other overseas visits. If you're living in a place, one of the simplest things that you can do to differentiate yourself is let's say that you're living in a place that has a significant draw of tourists.

Well, you can learn a foreign language and then market yourself as that tourist services provider to that specific language group. And there are tons of tour guides that make their living in New York City or in Sao Paolo because they speak Japanese. And the Japanese tourists that love to come to Sao Paolo, that's the automatic tour agency that they would use because they're specialized in that.

And then priorities for international education, international mobility of students, and then languages needed for cultural education, diplomatic and security purposes, and moving fast for time. Which brings me to the last one, table 12, levels of English proficiency. One of the more interesting balancing factors that they bring in is how common is English in these particular languages?

Because if you already speak English and you want to live in a certain country, but English is widely spoken there, you may not need to spend your time learning that particular language. So for example, places of very high English proficiency on this list, very high, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Singapore, and Luxembourg.

If I wanted to live in the Netherlands, would I learn Dutch? I would learn Dutch, but there wouldn't be as nearly of a pressing need to learn Dutch as if I'm living in Mongolia. Mongolia has a very low level of English proficiency. I really need to speak Mongolian if I'm living in Mongolia.

I don't really need to speak English if I'm living in the Netherlands. And so, now me personally liking languages and wanting to really connect with a culture and wanting to be able to cross those cultural barriers, I would, but if I'm just learning languages, I wouldn't encourage my children, you really need to learn Dutch.

I would choose something more strategically. So let's go through some of these. The, again, very high levels of English proficiency, Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Singapore, and Luxembourg. Very high levels of English proficiency. So not a really pressing need to learn the local language. What about high levels of English proficiency?

Austria, Germany, Poland, Belgium, Malaysia, Philippines, Switzerland, Portugal, Czech Republic, Serbia, Hungary, Argentina, and Romania. Moderate levels, Slovakia, India, Dominican Republic, Bulgaria, Spain, Bosnia and Herzegovina, South Korea, Italy, France, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Taiwan. So we're in that moderate range. This for me has been a language like Hindi.

I'm super interested in the potential for India as a nation. I think it's one of the met world's economies is gonna make a huge difference in the coming decades. I haven't been to India yet, I'd like to go. I don't have any clue about how to crack the Indian culture and where the opportunities are.

But one of the reasons why I've often not been particularly interested in learning Hindi has simply been that there are huge, huge widespread levels of English speaking. English being an official language of India, it's just seemed like, oh, it's very hard, harder for me to learn Hindi, but I could probably get along well in English.

So that's been a reason why even though Hindi is widely spoken from a numeric factor, I've never been particularly interested in it as a foreign language for me to learn. I think the natural counter argument to that, however, would be the use of a foreign language to establish more of a cultural connection.

So if I were working in an industry with a lot of Indian employees, then I think I would try to learn at least some basic Hindi so that I could demonstrate an appreciation of the language and smooth out my relationships with my coworkers, superiors, employees that I'm managing, just to have that bring the cultural barriers between the Indian culture and maybe the American culture, the Canadian culture, to bring that down.

Low levels of proficiency in English, Russia, Japan, Uruguay, Macau, Costa Rica, China, Brazil, Ukraine, Chile, Mexico, Morocco, Peru, the UAE, Ecuador, Pakistan, and then very low levels of proficiency in English, Colombia, Panama, Turkey, Tunisia, Guatemala, Kazakhstan, Egypt, Thailand, Azerbaijan, Sri Lanka, Qatar, Venezuela, Iran, Jordan, El Salvador, Oman, Kuwait, Mongolia, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Cambodia, Laos, Libya, Iraq, et cetera.

So you can consider that and consider what other factors there are for you. So from this analysis for the British Council, the 10 most important languages, Spanish, Mandarin, French, Arabic, German, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Japanese, and Russian. I will close this out with two quotes from this particular report that I'm referencing, and I will link the report in the show notes that you can download the PDF and read it yourself if you're interested in this.

But from the introduction, the authors of the report write this. They say, "As the UK embarks on a new era of cooperation with Europe and with the rest of the world, the extent to which the country can realize the vision of a truly global UK in the long-term will depend on our ability to succeed in a competitive international environment and to understand and connect with people across the world." I took that quote, and I just marked out the UK, and I put it in for Joshua, right?

As Joshua embarks, you of course insert your own name, but as Joshua embarks on a new era of cooperation with the world, the extent to which Joshua can realize his vision of a truly global lifestyle in the long-term will depend on his ability to succeed in a competitive international environment and to understand and connect with people across the world.

And one way to do that, I'll read directly from the report, "The ability to function in more than one language is increasingly being seen not just as enabling a basic transaction, but as a crucial component of a set of skills, attributes, and knowledge required for success in the world today." One other quote that came from a business leader in the report, sorry, from the finance editor, Liana Brindid, the finance editor and the business insider, who said this, "Speaking German will not only get you, in general, the highest paid job, it is also the language that is in highest demand across job postings." Now, I think that if we were dealing with people who were not speaking English, then English would replace that.

Perhaps there's a region or a country in which it wouldn't, but I think globally speaking for non-English speakers, speaking English will get you, in general, the highest paid job, and it is the language that is in the highest demand across job postings. But if you are an English speaker, you wanna think about that.

What is the language that is in the highest demand? What is the language that will get me the highest paid job? And what is the language that is in the highest demand across job postings? It's hard work to learn a language. Maybe enjoyable, may not be. Some people like it, some people don't.

I think a lot of times, the reasons people don't like languages is simply bad methodology, right? They're sitting in a class being drilled on grammar exercises, which stink. But if you can get a great story, get a great novel, figure out what you're into, and learn how to read that in the language, it can be super fun and really enjoyable.

I enjoy my foreign language study. Right now, I've only studied and am studying languages that I have a natural connection to the alphabet of. My next language next year is going to be Mandarin Chinese. That's gonna be a lot of slog work at the beginning as I learn to read Chinese characters.

That's gonna be a huge level of just work. But then once I break through with the knowledge of the characters, it's gonna start to be fun again because I'll find literature and material that I really enjoy and that I'm really interested in. And that's the secret to making it fun.

So I think a lot of people who think language learning is not interesting or not fun, probably maybe they're studying the wrong language for the wrong reasons, or they have bad tools, or bad philosophy, et cetera. If you're not into it, you're not into it. Go develop yourself some other way.

But if you are into it, or at least you're open to it, recognize that proficiency in languages, another language, a set of languages, could possibly make you very attractive in the job market. Minimize your personal unemployment rate, which is incredibly important, and possibly open up to you some of the most interesting jobs you could imagine.

Again, I don't plan to do it at this point in time 'cause at this point in time, the travel needed is not on my priority list. But one of my dream jobs was that international mutual fund research analyst or something like that. Love business, like investing. And so you tell Joshua that he gets to go to Sri Lanka and interview the management staff of a local company, man, I'm in.

I think that sounds awesome. And languages are a useful component of that. Hope you've enjoyed this part two of the series. In closing, I would pitch to you my course on career and income planning. If you're looking strategically at your finances and you're trying to figure out where do I focus my efforts on the most productive things, it's got to be your income.

And you wanna do two things. You wanna make sure that you love your work, that you love your job. To the extent possible, you wanna make sure that you tap dance into work every day, so famously, pithily described by Warren Buffett, right? You wanna make sure it's fun, that you enjoy it.

And you can do that. There are so many opportunities for diverse kinds of jobs and work available today that it's one of the best times in the world. It's the best time in human history because of just the simple, interesting work you can do. It's so cool. And so you wanna do work that's interesting to you because if it's work that you care about, that's interesting to you, that you love, that you believe matters, then the pay almost doesn't matter.

And then number two is you wanna work in an area where you can be paid very, very well. You can be paid very, very well. And if you'll develop jobs, work that you can be paid very, very well for, then you become very, very wealthy very quickly. You can live a very high lifestyle.

And so if you're sitting in a place where you're sitting around and you're unemployed, I would urge you, take the time, take your chance that you have right now to, you're unemployed, and spend your time investing into interesting work, developing yourself to be qualified for interesting work. Maybe you're sitting in the United States and you're in Atlanta, Georgia, and you're looking around and you're like, my city's on fire.

And I'm not into this. Well, why don't you make a plan to move to Paris, right? Or move to London or move to, Brazil's hard right now 'cause of coronavirus, but move to, the whole world is, move to Tokyo, right? Maybe that's your thing. Or move to Singapore or wherever you're interested in, whatever region of the world you, Vanuatu, I don't know.

Something that you think would be really awesome. And your dream might be to move to Vanuatu and open a surf shop. My dream would be more akin to move to Singapore and become an international banker or become a business consultant, but you can do it. You can do it.

And if you've got something that would be interesting to you and you can trade out working in an office building in Atlanta, Georgia, and trade up for being a business consultant across Europe, across Western Europe, go for it. And so if you need to get a degree, get busy.

If you need to apply for a job and you need to learn French or German, do it. In three months, you can be at conversational level in some of these languages that are accessible. In six months, you can be at pretty decent in a year of hard study, especially if you've got time.

In a year of hard study, you could be very, very conversant in any of these languages. Not promising, you know, fluency is a hard concept to nail down, but the point is it's available to you. So if you look around you and the life that you're living isn't motivating and exciting, then think about what would be.

And if you're interested in some input, some advice on how to do that, how to position yourself, how to think through that analysis and how to market yourself into a new career or a new job, go to radicalpersonalfinance.com/store and buy my guide on career and income planning. It's the decision, choosing the right career is the single most important factor for you in terms of the enjoyment of your work life and in the amount of money that you earn and how wealthy you ultimately become.

So go to radicalpersonalfinance.com/store and buy the "Radical Personal Finance Guide to Career and Income Planning." I'll see you in the course.