Hey parents, join the LA Kings on Saturday, November 25th for an unforgettable kids day presented by Pear Deck. Family fun, giveaways, and exciting Kings hockey awaits. Get your tickets now at lakings.com/promotions and create lasting memories with your little ones. Radical Personal Finance, Episode 60. I got some stuff wrong, and you need to know about it.

Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance podcast. I thank you for being here. Today is Friday, September the 12th, 2014. My name is Joshua Sheets. I'm your host. On today's show, I'm going to talk about some stuff I got wrong, and give you guys some most excellent questions to consider where you want to go over the next few years.

Hope you find it beneficial. I thank you for being here on a beautiful Friday. First off, right off the bat, those of you who are regular listeners, you may be able to hear in my voice, I apologize that A) I haven't been here for you the last couple days, and B) I apologize that my voice is a little bit wonky.

I didn't get the show put out on Thursday, or Wednesday. I had the previously scheduled interview show lined up, and that was all pre-recorded, ready to launch live on Thursday, so that went out on schedule. But early Wednesday morning, I woke up right in the middle of the night and had to throw up right in the middle of the night.

It was most unpleasant. And just out of the blue, don't know where it came from, and then was flat on my back for a day and a half, and then pretty weak for the next half a day. So I lost two days of work that I had planned. By the way, if this is your first show joining me, either go back a day or go forward a day, because this show is going to be of interest to those who are regular listeners, but it's not going to be of interest to you if this is your first show.

So again, go back a day or go forward a day. This is going to build on a lot of other shows and correct some things that I've gotten wrong in other shows, and then also it's going to be for the regular listeners. So I woke up and was sick for two days, and just out of the blue, hadn't been ignoring my health, hadn't been not taking care of myself, just got sick and doing better now, but my voice is still recovering.

So that put quite a hitch in my plans. I'd been working hard to have shows lined up for you guys while I was away for the next two weeks, already had some interview shows lined up and scheduled for this next week, and so those were all lined up, all the interview shows pre-recorded, the intros and outros done, ready to go.

And then I had show notes and outlines set for five individual shows that were going to be recorded, so I had everything lined up, but being flat on my back Wednesday and Thursday resulted in my not being able to do that. And then I messed up the count because I had the shows already pre-prepared.

So if you go back and you look in your show notes, or go back and look in your podcast feed, if you go back and see Wednesday's show, I've inserted a show for Wednesday after the fact, and I think you should check that one out. It's a special sick day show.

I don't like to have--I just want to have a show here every day. It's important to me, but they don't have to all be the same. So Wednesday is just a very short nine-minute excerpt from an interview that I found very interesting with Kevin Kelly on the Tim Ferriss podcast.

It's a nine-minute excerpt. I think you'll enjoy that. So if you are listening day by day, go back and check that out in your feed for Wednesday's show, episode 58. And the reason I had to go back--by the way, I don't mind missing a show. The reason I needed to go back and put that in was because I had 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, and I had pre-recorded the intros for the interviews for this next week.

And if I did that, basically I would have a missing show or everything would be wrong. I just decided I didn't want to have a missing show from the numbers. So going on, today I am going to accomplish basically three things. I'm going to, number one, give you just a quick update on what you can expect for the next two weeks.

I'll do it very quickly. Number two, I'm going to give two corrections that I have--some stuff I got wrong over the last couple weeks, and I want to correct both of those things because one of them is very important, one of them is important. And then number three, I'm going to give you what I think is a really great exercise this weekend, and I want to give it to you on a Friday show so you'll have time to do this exercise.

And I think it would be--it's an excellent place to start or even to continue as you're working on your personal financial plans. Thank you. Today is usually--Fridays are usually a Q&A show. Thank you for those of you who have left some voicemails for me. I have received so far as of today, September 12th, as I'm recording this and as this show will go out, I've received a total of three voicemails, which is really cool.

These three voicemails, two of them are questions, excellent questions, and one of them is just a thank you and a testimonial, and I just so appreciate that. It warmed my heart to hear, and I thank you. The questions were excellent. I had planned to cover one of them today but just crunched on time, and I can't give it justice and record the other things that I need to record today.

So--but I thank you for those. Those will be on a future show. If you haven't called in a question yet, please do so. Just go by the website, and you'll see the "Send Voicemail" button. You can do it on your computer, you can do it on your smartphone, and you'll be able just to send in a voicemail.

And feel free to call in a question or a comment. Either one would be fine. I would be happy to have them. The questions have been excellent, and I think it's going to be a great way to bring more of the audience into the show so you can hear some of the great questions, and also will be a great way for me to get an idea of the things that are of interest to you as an audience.

Right now, so far, I'm kind of going based upon what's interesting to me, but I like to hear the things that are of interest to you. So thank you to you guys. Over the next two weeks, I am leaving Monday morning for New Orleans. I will be out there for a week at the FinCon conference, which is formerly the Financial Bloggers Conference.

It's basically a giant meetup of people involved in the financial blogging, financial media, and financial advice, I don't know, the financial world. And I'm really excited about it, because I've never really met any financial bloggers, except one or two that I've met offline, and then others that I met at the Podcast Movement Conference.

So I'm looking forward to meeting a bunch of financial people and hearing about this new industry that I've gotten myself into. I'm interested in learning a lot about it, so that will be fun. And then the following week, I will be up in Pennsylvania for a week of classes, fulfilling a residency requirement for my MSFS degree from the American College.

MSFS is Masters in Financial Planning. FS is Masters of Science in Financial Services from the American College, which is a university of financial planning up there near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. So I'll be up there for a week of classes, looking forward to that, but I won't have much time to record shows while up there.

Over the next three weeks, I have two interviews recorded and scheduled for next week on Tuesday and Thursday. One is an interview with Eric Hemingway on his experience. He hosts the Family Adventure Podcast, and he and his wife and six kids spent three and a half years traveling the world.

And really an interesting story, and we talk about how his financial planning allowed him to do that on a sailboat and how much he spent. You definitely will enjoy that. On Thursday, I will be releasing an interview with Jeremy and Winnie from Go Curry Cracker. They write an excellent blog, and are early retirees, retired in their early 30s, and now consider themselves perpetual travelers.

And they're doing some excellent work with the more technical side of tax planning. So that will be out on Thursday. Next week, I do not have time to prepare the shows, the lengthy shows that I have. I have a series of short essays, kind of just a few-minute essays that I'll be releasing.

Hope you enjoy those. While at FinCon, I may be able to record a show or two. I plan to, but no commitments there. And if I can do that, I will release those as well. And then hopefully we'll have some essays lined up that I hope you'll enjoy. And then also, there may be a day or two without shows, and I will be back, basically the first week in October, ready to go, with back to the normal schedule, and hopefully some of this traveling behind me.

Let's get to the corrections. The two corrections that I need to cover. The first one came in on episode 55, which was the episode--which was a listener question. The listener was named John. And he said, "Joshua, I have a million bucks in assets. I'm 35, and I hate my job.

Can I retire early?" And I gave through my answers of yes and no, depending on how you do it, and laid out the six different financial plans that I made up that would allow him to retire right now, depending on how he did it. In that podcast, I was making an illustration when talking about the IRS rule of 72(t) rules, which are about the series of substantially equal payments, which allows you to avoid the 10% early withdrawal penalty on distributions from retirement accounts.

And I used an example of a 55-year-old who is retiring early and taking money out of their 401(k). And in the example, I said that this person at 55 years old, if making distributions from a 401(k) at early retirement, it would be troublesome because they would have to have those last for at least five years or until 59 and a half, whichever is later.

That's what the 72(t) rules cover. Kevin corrected me on the blog, and Kevin, thank you for doing that. He said that, "I've researched this since I'm a 55-year-old, and I found that if you're 55 or older and leave your employment, you have access to the entire 401(k) without penalty.

I thought this could be helpful information." Kevin, it is. Thank you. I just screwed up. I forgot about that rule, and that's what I get for making up examples on the top of my head and then forgetting about the little wrinkles. There is a rule on 401(k) plans. If you terminate your employment early, so terminate prior to the age of 59 and a half, as early as 55, you can distribute the amounts from the account without having to pay the 10% penalty tax.

That is a very important rule for you to know. I just blanked on it. I apologize for doing that, and I thank you for pointing it out to me. Here are a couple of details on how and why that might be important for you to consider. If you are an early retiree and you're working at a job and you have a 401(k), if you're someone, which it sounds like Kevin is, if you're just looking at early retirement, you would want to make sure that you know that so you know you don't have to keep working until 59 and a half to take money out of your 401(k).

Also, you would want to make sure you know that so you don't take your money and roll it into an IRA. And that's the big gotcha here. Generally, if you talk with most financial planners, most of us will tell you for various reasons, which I won't go over today, we tell you if you leave your job, take your 401(k) with you and roll it into an IRA.

There are exceptions to that rule, and this would be one of those exceptions. If in this situation, if Kevin, if you were to leave your 401(k) and if you were to roll that account into an IRA and then you were to try to take advantage of that rule, the rule is now gone because that does not apply to your IRA.

That only applies to 401(k) plans. So you would want to make sure that either you left all of your assets in the 401(k) and took your distributions from that 401(k) or that you only rolled over assets into your IRA that you did not anticipate using prior to age 59 1/2.

So if you take advantage of that rule, if you're 55 and older, that will allow you to be a little bit smarter and not-- it will allow you to avoid having to go through the 72(t) and the Roth conversion strategies and those other-- the strategies to get the money out early.

This also could be important for other early retiree planning because that basically--and I'm just going off the top of my head here, but I'm pretty confident in this. If you were planning out your early retirement strategy, I should tell Brandon, Mad Scientist, and Jeremy, Go Curry Cracker, who are both really interested in this technical side about this.

If one of you is friends with Brandon, I'll shoot him a note and let him know that he might be interested in this. But this is one rule that he should bring into his scenarios-- Brandon, the Mad Scientist--what he should bring into his scenarios that he models on early retirement is that if you had a 401(k), you could theoretically, I think, maintain this, and if you're terminated from service at an early age and you keep the money in the 401(k), then that will allow you to cover that age 55 to age 60 gap out of that 401(k), so then you wouldn't have to do the Roth conversion for that amount of the money.

He ought to factor that in because he is really good at focusing on all these little rules. I've got to make sure he knows about that one. I had forgotten about it. So, Kevin, thank you for correcting me. I would encourage others of you, if you ever find a mistake in what I say, please correct me.

Come by the blog. If you think I'm just wrong, come by and tell me. I'll enjoy hearing your side of the story, and I may change my mind. I have done that over many things over time. And two, if you find I'm factually wrong, not just because you think I'm wrong, I would appreciate knowing.

I'm one guy doing this show with the minimum amount of time that I--just giving it as much as I can, but I don't have as much--I'm not able to make as much time as I would like to be able to prep everything, fact-check everything. I don't have a team of fact-checkers.

It's me just doing it. So I am sure that I will get stuff wrong even more in the future, and I would appreciate your helping me to get things right. So if you find something, I'm relying on you to do some crowd-sourced fact-checking because I guarantee there are some of you in the audience who are way better at this than I am, and all of you will have expertise in some subject that I don't, so I'm relying on you for crowd-sourced fact-checking.

And I promise I will always--either in the show notes or on the show-- I will always acknowledge when I get stuff wrong and try to correct it and make it right. That's very important to me to do, and I will work hard to do that. The second thing that I got wrong was actually on yesterday's show, was an interview with Ryan Finley from re-craigslist.com.

And Ryan writes an awesome blog, really enjoyed the interview. During that interview, we were talking about the ability of young people at a very early age, and I personally wonder a lot of times--I'm not going to say I'm sure-- I just wonder if we don't hamstring young people at an early age, and by just more than we should, by kind of covering up their ability a lot of times.

And this is a subject I'm interested in. I'll share some more thoughts in future shows. But for today, I just want to acknowledge two things. Number one is I gave two examples in our conversation. One was talking about Admiral Farragut, and I was talking about the early age at which he became a captain of a ship.

And during the conversation, I wasn't able to remember the admiral's name. I went and looked it up later, and I read some info from his Wikipedia entry, and I feel like I may have misrepresented his story because it's amazing enough without me representing it. I think he was the youngest admiral in U.S.

Navy history, but he was not made the youngest admiral at the age of 12. He did indeed have his first command at the age of 12, and that was when he was put aboard a ship, which was a prize that they had defeated the ship, and then he was put aboard with a skeleton crew, and he was made the temporary captain of that ship with a skeleton crew at the age of 12 years old to sail it into harbor.

Then he went on and continued to serve, and he grew through other commands as he grew older, and then he did become the youngest admiral in U.S. Navy history. Admiral Farragut, fascinating story to read more about him. But I felt like I misrepresented it in the comments, even my own correction after the show.

The second thing that I got wrong, and I didn't think of it at the time, and later after I released the show, it just was nagging my mind, and I went back and checked out some details, and I want to correct some details I got wrong about Benjamin Franklin's story.

I believe I said in that interview that Benjamin Franklin started publishing his almanac at the age in his early teens. I was wrong about that. He did not start publishing his almanac until the age of 26. And again, I want to make sure I get this right because the true story is impressive enough without me getting details wrong.

He didn't start publishing poor Richard's almanac until age 26, and poor Richard's almanac was what indeed won him great fame and notoriety. And his story, however, before age 26, of what he had done before 26, was amazing enough. And when you look at his educational background, that was amazing enough.

The one key thing that most impresses me about Benjamin Franklin's life that I want to read is I want to read how he educated himself. And Benjamin Franklin was truly an amazing person, and he was financially independent at the age of 43. At the age of 43, he retired.

So remember, this is in an era where he started off as the youngest son of a hardworking tradesperson with 13 children, and he started with nothing. And he was a self-made man in early colonial America, and at the age of 43, he was financially independent. And there are a lot of lessons that we can learn from him and from his experiences in achieving that financial independence.

I'm re-inspired to go back and re-read his autobiography. I think I skimmed it a few years ago, but I didn't find it very interesting just because the language is very old-fashioned. But I've added it to my reading list. I'm going to go back and try to re-read his autobiography that he wrote and try to pull out some of the lessons from it that we can apply to financial planning.

Because notice when he retired, that was when he went on to scientific pursuits. He didn't just sit around and do the equivalent of whatever watching TV was in his day. And he achieved early retirement in an age where he didn't have the 4% rule to do it. So how did he do it?

Well, we'll talk about that another time. I want to read to you two pages that I find fascinating, which goes over-- the two pages are discussing how he educated himself. And to me, this is amazing, because this is what I was talking about when he was in his early teens.

This is what he was doing when he was in his late-- what would those be, single digits, tens? No, tens would be teens. When he was, I don't know, about ten and older, this is how he was educating himself. These two pages are coming from a book entitled An Underground History of American Education by an author named John Taylor Gatto.

I have referenced this book a couple times on the show. Of all of the books that I have read on school and education, this is the one that most challenged-- that I find most challenging to basically everything I've ever thought and learned about school and education. And this is a subject of great interest to me, for those of you to whom it's also interesting.

I would recommend that you read this book. He published it for free on his website online. So check it out. You can just Google "Underground History." You'll find his website, and I will try to remember to include a link in the show notes. Additionally, if you don't like the page-by-page format that he has on his site, you can easily find a PDF online.

And if I can, I'll link to one of those in the show notes as well, where you can read it in its entirety. This book will challenge you with how much you know about the system of schooling that you live in. I'll just ask you one question, and I won't answer it, because it's a question I think we all should be asked and that I'm answering for myself.

How much do you know about where the school system that you live in-- that we all live in--came from? And don't answer too quickly, and do some research before, because I certainly have been challenged by some of the things that I have read. But these two pages are really interesting, because they lay out how Franklin educated himself, and I think it's utterly fascinating.

There are some comments from the author, Gatto, and then there are some quotes from Benjamin Franklin's autobiography. So when I mention, as I read this, "quote, end quote," those are the quotes from Benjamin Franklin's writing himself. "As it is for most members of a literate society, reading was the largest single element of Franklin's educational foundation.

Quote, 'From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid out in books. Pleased with Pilgrim's progress, my first collection was of John Bunyan's works in separate little volumes. I afterwards sold them to enable me to buy R.

Burton's historical collections. They were small Chapman's books and cheap, 40 to 50 in all. My father's little library consisted chiefly of books in polemic divinity, most of which I read. Plutarch's Lives there was, in which I read abundantly, and I still think that time spent to great advantage. There was also a book of Defoe's, called An Essay on Projects, and another of Dr.

Mather's, called Essays to Do Good, which perhaps gave me a turn of thinking that had an influence on some of the principal future events in my life. You might well ask how young Franklin was reading Bunyan, Burton, Mather, Defoe, Plutarch, and works of polemic divinity before he would have been in junior high school.

If you were schooled in the brain development lore of academic pedagogy, it might seem quite a tour de force.' I should have clarified before starting to read that, yes, this was when he was-- I think I did clarify-- when he was 10, 11, 12 years old that he was reading those books.

'How do you suppose this son of a working man, with 13 kids, became such an effective public speaker that for more than half a century his voice was heard nationally and internationally on the great questions? He employed a method absolutely free. He argued with his friend Collins, "Very fond we were of argument, and very desirous of confuting one another, which disputatious turn is based upon contradiction." Here Franklin warns against using dialectics on friendships or at social gatherings.

"I had caught it, the dialectical habit, by reading my father's books a dispute about religion. A question was started between Collins and me of the propriety of educating the female sex in learning and their abilities to study. He was of the opinion that it was improper. I took the contrary side." Shortly after he began arguing, he also began reading the most elegant periodical of the day, Addison and Steele's Spectator.

"I thought the writing excellent and wished, if possible, to imitate it. With that in view, I took some of the papers and, making short hints of the sentiment in each sentence, laid them by a few days and then, without looking at the book, tried to complete the papers again, by expressing each hinted sentiment at length, and as fully as it had been expressed before, in any suitable words that should come to hand.

Then I compared my spectator with the original, discovered some of my faults, and corrected them." This method was hammered out while working a 60-hour week. In learning eloquence, there's only Ben, his determination, and the spectator, no teacher. For instance, while executing rewrites, Franklin came to realize his vocabulary was too barren.

"I found I wanted a stock of words, which I thought I should have acquired before that time if I had gone on making verses, since the continual occasion for words of the same import but of different length, to suit the measure, or of different sounds for the rhyme, would have laid me under a constant necessity of searching for variety, and also have tended to fix that variety in my mind and make me master of it." As a good empiricist, he tried a home cure for this deficiency.

"I took some tales and turned them into verse, and after a time when I had pretty well forgotten the prose, turned them back again. I also sometimes jumbled my collection of hints," his outline, "into confusions, and after some weeks endeavored to reduce them into the best order, which I began to form the full sentences and complete the paper.

This was to teach me method in the arrangement of thoughts. By comparing my work afterwards with the original, I discovered many faults and amended them. But I sometimes thought I had been lucky enough to improve the method or the language." By the time he was sixteen, Franklin was ready to take up his deficiencies in earnest, with full confidence he could, by his own efforts, overcome them.

Here's how he handled that problem with arithmetic. "Being on some occasion made ashamed of my ignorance in figures, which I had twice failed in learning when at school, I took Crocker's book of arithmetic and went through the whole by myself with great ease. I also read Sellers and Shermy's book of navigation, and became acquainted with the geometry they contain." This school dropout tells us he was also reading John Locke's essay concerning human understanding, as well as studying the arts of rhetoric and logic, particularly the Socratic method of disputation, which so charmed and intrigued him that he abruptly dropped his former argumentative style, putting on the mask of the humble inquirer and doubter.

I'll stop there. Ben Franklin had two years of schooling in his entire lifetime. He went to one year of grammar school, and he went to another year at a less-- he got kicked out, somehow, I think he misbehaved, and he got kicked out, and he went to a year of writing and figuring school or something, which was evidently a little bit less prestigious than grammar school was at that time.

And it's fascinating, because in this section of the history of education, Gatto goes through the history of Franklin, George Washington, some of the founders of the country, many of the people who were well-known in the Revolutionary War, Farragut, and a couple of other examples that aren't coming to mind right now.

And he just goes through these examples, and he talks about how educated the average person was compared to their schooling. Now, without getting off track into schooling today, just what impressed me about that, and what I want you just to take away, is that how he took control of his education, and he modeled it.

And he did that at a very early age. And that's what I found so impressive, is how clear he was at the age, in his early teens or before, recognizing his own problems and correcting them, recognizing that he didn't have an adequate vocabulary, and so practicing writing poetry in order to enhance that vocabulary, and in studying new words.

And he recognizing that he didn't have the skill that he needed in mathematics, so going and buying a book of mathematics to learn. And simply recognizing and practicing his writing style by comparing it to the best that he had available to him, and correcting that and learning. And I was so impressed by that, and also by the things that he did at an early age, and how it seems as though we forget about the fact that George Washington, at 12 years old, is out surveying as a professional surveyor.

Excuse me, not 12 years old, 17 years old. It's so hard to get these dates right, forgive me. I'm doing my best to be very accurate, but I need to make sure that I have my facts very carefully lined up. Washington had no schooling until he was 11. Let me read one quick paragraph from, one more paragraph here from an underground history of American education, and you can see why I'm so impressed with some of these stories.

Washington had no schooling until he was 11. No classroom confinement, no blackboards. He arrived at school already knowing how to read, write, and calculate about as well as the average college student today. If that sounds outlandish, turn back to Franklin's curriculum, and compare it with the intellectual diet of a modern, gifted, and talented class.

Full literacy wasn't unusual in the colonies or early republic. Many schools wouldn't admit students who didn't know reading and counting, because few schoolmasters were willing to waste time teaching what was so easy to learn. It was deemed a mark of depraved character if literacy hadn't been attained by the matriculating student.

Even the many charity schools operated by churches, towns, and philanthropic associations for the poor would have been flabbergasted at the great hue and cry raised today about difficulties teaching literacy. American experience proved the contrary. Following George to school at 11 to see what the schoolmaster had in store would reveal a skimpy menu of studies, yet one with a curious gravity.

Geometry, trigonometry, and surveying. You might regard that as impossible, or consider it was only a dumbed-down version of those things, some kids' game akin to the many simulations one finds today in schools for prosperous children. Simulated city building, simulated court trials, simulating businesses, virtual realities to bridge the gap between adult society and the immaturity of the young.

But if George didn't get the real thing, how do you account for his first job as official surveyor for Culpeper County, Virginia, only 2,000 days after he first hefted a surveyor's transit in school? For the next three years, Washington earned the equivalent of about $100,000 a year in today's purchasing power.

It's probable his social connections helped this fatherless boy get the position, but in frontier society, anyone would be crazy to give a boy serious work unless he actually could do it. Almost at once, he began speculating in land. He didn't need a futurist to tell him which way the historical wind was blowing.

By the age of 21, he had leveraged his knowledge and income into 2,500 acres of prime land in Frederick County, Virginia. So again, I don't want to get the facts incorrect because the facts are impressive enough without my mixing up a date or two. So I'm going to try to be very careful in the future with some of those dates and ages.

And I'm going to be very careful. And if you find me getting one wrong, please let me know. And I hope that you find those thoughts interesting. Washington would also be one who would be interesting for me to study and do a show on what we could learn from his example.

I love these historical examples because what you find is that people have been achieving their financial goals since long before we ever had 401(k)s and since we ever had disability income insurance. They've been applying the principles of finance that go far beyond just the short-term tactics. And then once you understand the principles, then we can apply them in our own lives, whether we're living in the United States, whether we're living in Canada, whether we're living in Kenya, whether we're living in Brazil or Costa Rica or you insert wherever you happen to live.

We can apply those principles beyond whatever our local scenario is. And then once we understand those principles, I think that'll help us to be less worried, so to speak, about the changes that can occur. So we may be less worried about when the monetary system is adjusted, whether we're dealing in pounds or euros or whether Scotland separates from England or whether the Federal Reserve continues their purchases or doesn't continue their purchases or whether we have access to a 401(k) at work or not or whatever, you get the point.

Yes, all those things matter and they are important, but we can work through them because they will always be changing. They're changing now. They will always be changing. We need to look forward and see the changes and then create plans that will work no matter what those changes are.

Now, let's wrap up with some questions that I would like to share with you, and I hope you'll find these helpful. I really want to, in each show, I'm not just doing a show every day to fill up the air with my shows. I'm doing a show every day because I want to provide useful opportunities and useful thoughts for each and every day that will help you on your journey towards wealth and towards independence in every way.

I want to share with you some questions, and these are actually, I want to give credit to Dan Sullivan as the inventor of these questions. Now, when I first heard these questions, I didn't actually know that it was Dan Sullivan who had invented them. I first heard these questions, especially the first one, when I was working as a financial planner.

And most financial planners, or at least any good financial planners, will generally not start by talking about, with you, if you were consulting with a financial planner, they won't start by talking with you about, "Okay, how much you got in your 401(k)?" or "How much insurance do you have?" That's not a good place to start for a good conversation.

It's really not. So a good financial planner will never start there. And if a client wants to start there, I'd usually avoid the conversation, because I've never had good experience with clients who want to start there. No offense to those of you who would start there, I'm sure. But the thing is, most of the people who want to-- most of the people who sit down in a financial planner's office and say, "What can you do for me?" without sharing anything about their situation, it's either kind of a baiting game-- this is my experience, okay?

If your experience is different, that's fine. But my experience is either a baiting game, as far as, "Let me see if I can trap the financial planner "in something that I can point out where they're just stupid "and they don't understand what they're talking about," or it may be some kind of just comparison of services, as in, "I've already decided that I'm going to use Company X, "but let me just check real quick "and do some quick quotes from B, C, and D," and--or something like that.

It's just I've never had any of those conversations go anywhere, so I always just used to end them. And if those of you--some of you use that tactic, that's fine. Maybe you'll find people that are interested to work with you in that way. I never found it effective for me.

It doesn't work for my personality. I don't like to be compared, you know, by-- I don't mind being compared, but I don't like to be compared with someone else's spreadsheet when I don't even know what the factors are on the spreadsheet yet, and I would just rather avoid the whole scenario and work with people that I like and that respect me and that trust me.

So hopefully that's not insulting to anybody. But--so a good--most good financial planners will start with goals, and a lot of times this gets kind of a bad rap 'cause people often hear this and they kind of make fun of it and say, "Well, you know, what are your goals?

What are your goals?" But hopefully you're starting to understand, and this shows by now, is that everything depends on your goals. So a good financial planner who's working as a consultant and who's really listening to you has to start there, not with saying, "Let me compare the--you know, let me assess the fees on your mutual funds for you." That has a place, and that's important, but it's not where to start.

And so years ago, I found-- I was listening to a tape by somebody with financial planning training, part of my automobile university while I was driving around, and I heard someone ask this question, and the question was-- as a kind of an opening question for a client, the question was, "If we were sitting down three years from today, what has to have happened for you over the next three years for you to really feel happy about your progress?" And I just thought, "What a brilliant question." Because the trouble when you're working as a financial planner with clients is you want to be specific and direct, but you don't want to be too specific and too direct too quickly.

You know, there's a little bit of a getting up and kind of a getting-to-know-you time, and there's a real art to it, to be able to do it in a way that's comfortable for people and is something that you just have to learn. But when I heard that question, I said, "That's a great question.

I can use that." And so I immediately started using it with clients to good effect. And from then on, basically for every introductory financial planning meeting that I ever did for the next-- it must have been three, four, five--I don't know, three or four years, something like that, I always started with that question.

But I didn't know where it came from. And then I later found it on-- I was listening to a success CD, the success magazine. If you subscribe every month, they send you a success CD. And somewhere on a success CD, I heard that question. I said, "Oh, it came from someone else other than the person I heard it from." And then at some point, I was rereading a book called "The Success Principles," which is written by Jack Canfield.

And in that book, I found the same question. Except when I found it in Jack Canfield's book, it had three follow-up questions that I found were super valuable. And so that's what I'm going to share with you today. And I hope you'll take these. I will write the questions out in the show notes, and I hope you'll take these and use them as a stimulus for your own thinking.

So I thought they were well-written questions. In preparation--oh, by the way, just real quick, since I mentioned Jack Canfield's book, "The Success Principles," if you're looking for one book that is probably the best book that is the most comprehensive and the most pithy, I would recommend to you a book called "The Success Principles" by Jack Canfield.

Of all of the "success literature" that I've ever read, it's really comprehensive, really well-written, and just an excellent resource. So I would commend it to you as worth your time if you're looking for one book. It's the type of book where it's great to read one chapter a day.

They're very short chapters, very comprehensive. Every one is very useful. And then there are many other books that you can follow up for more detailed information. But even just in preparing real quick to see if I could find something for this show and to see if I could find something on Dan Sullivan's site with a link to these questions, I actually found he wrote a whole book on it.

And it's called "The Dan Sullivan Question." I didn't know about the book, but I just found it a couple minutes ago. I've gone ahead and added it to my list here. You can find it on Amazon. It's called "The Dan Sullivan Question." And I assume that this is what-- this specific question is what the whole book is about.

But I need to verify that. But we're going to wrap up today with these questions. And what I want to do is I'm just going to read you the questions. There are four of them total. And then I will kind of stop, and then I will read them again.

And so that way, if you are interested in just hearing them again and then pausing and then writing down your answers or thinking about them-- a lot of times when I hear audio things, I'm usually driving in the car. So I'll read all four of them through quickly, one time.

And then I will read them again, and I'll stop. And you can pause the audio in between. And you can just think about them as you're driving down the road or doing whatever you're doing. And that can be helpful. If you have time this weekend, it might be a good journaling exercise to journal your answers to the questions.

And after I read the questions the second time, I won't--don't worry about me putting anything extra in there. So feel free just to-- I'm going to wrap up the show with that, and I won't put anything in after I read these questions again. But I like the questions for many reasons, and I'm not going to spend any more time talking about them.

I'm just going to tell you that they are probably the best written questions that I've ever found that are good for framing an overall view. And I think they're an excellent topic to have in your journaling notebook of thought starters to make sure that you're working towards the things that are important to you.

Question number one. If we were meeting three years from today, what has to have happened during that three-year period for you to feel happy about your progress? Question number two. What are the biggest dangers you'll have to face and deal with in order to achieve that progress? Question number three.

What are the biggest opportunities that you have that you would need to focus on and capture to achieve those things? Number four. What strengths will you need to reinforce and maximize, and what skills and resources will you need to develop that you don't currently have in order to capture those opportunities?

And those are the four questions. I recommend them to you as a worthy subject of thought, as a journaling exercise, so that you can help yourself to coach yourself and understand what you're trying to work toward, what your opportunities are. I hope that they are valuable to you. They've been very valuable to me, both professionally and personally.

I'm going to read them again. I will pause in between them. Feel free to pause your phone or MP3 player or whatever in between these questions if you're driving down the road and you'd like to just think about it. And there won't be anything after that. So number one.

If we were meeting three years from today, what has to have happened during that three-year period for you to feel happy about your progress? Number two. What are the biggest dangers you'll have to face and deal with in order to achieve that progress? Number three. What are the biggest opportunities that you have that you would need to focus on and capture to achieve those things?

Number four. What strengths will you need to reinforce and maximize? And what skills and resources will you need to develop that you don't currently have in order to capture those opportunities? Thank you for listening. Hey parents, join the LA Kings on Saturday, November 25th for an unforgettable Kids Day presented by Pear Deck.

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