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Ralphs. Fresh for everyone. Have you ever heard that, well, teachers never make any money, teachers can never get rich, teachers can never get ahead? Well, my guest today will destroy that argument. ♪ Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast. My name is Joshua Sheets. Thank you for being here.

Today is Monday, October 13, 2014, and today I have an interview show for you with the millionaire educator. Broke at 35, or at least a net worth of zero at 35, and then almost a millionaire about two decades later, all on a teacher's salary. ♪ I don't know about you, but I have a special place in my heart for teachers, considering, A, teachers have poured so many things into my life over the years.

There are a few people in our lives, if you put the people that have the biggest impact on our life, maybe it's our parents first, for most people. If you had excellent parents, maybe. And then probably a teacher, for many other people, came along and mentored you and really built into your life.

And I come from a family of teachers, and I consider myself a teacher, and I love... I like teachers. The challenge is, when it comes to financial planning for teachers, many people feel that all the rules just don't work. And my guest today is going to, A, destroy that myth, because he and his wife are teachers, and they've figured out a way to get rich, all on teacher salaries, doing nothing extraordinarily special, or at least nothing that is not possible to every other teacher.

And, number two, he's able to teach his way through it, which is especially useful. So, I really think you're going to enjoy today's interview. My guest, his name is Ed Mills, and yes, that is a pseudonym. The way you can know is "Transpose Millionaire Educator" and "Ed Mills," and you'll have the clue to his pseudonym.

But he's a really great guy, and he's got a very compelling story. Very compelling story. And he's going to walk through a lot of information in today's show. Today's show is going to be one of those that is very pithy. You're probably going to want to take some good notes.

It's very, very pithy. And if you're an educator, or if you know an educator, I would ask you to send them this show as a bit of inspiration. And if somebody has sent you this show, and this is your first time listening, welcome. Check back here every day. We do this every day.

I'm going to play for you the primary part of the interview, and then I'm going to wrap it up with just a couple of thoughts and comments at the end. And then I'm going to play for you a special bonus portion of the interview. The extra bonus is on education.

And he and I, I flipped the recorder off and then flipped it back on, and we just talked a little bit about education. And then as a special bonus, we actually talked through some of what I'm going to cover right now in this education series that I'm doing over this right here in October, about basically some really smart ways to pay for college.

And he's clearly developed some of the ideas that I've also developed. We found a good synergy in our conversation. So I think you're really going to enjoy this interview. Here it is. So, Ed, welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast. I appreciate your being here this morning. Thanks for having me.

I've been looking forward to this interview because there is a massive group of people known as teachers and educators, and I have a tremendous desire to serve this group of people with some excellent information, primarily probably for selfish reasons. I come from a family of teachers. My grandmother was a teacher, my mother was a teacher, my sister was a teacher, and my brother-in-law is currently an active teacher in the public school system.

So I think today we're going to be able to provide some really valuable information for the educational community. And I think you're the guy, you're the perfect guy for the job. So what I'd like to begin with is share with us a little bit about your story and make sure that you specifically share some of the failures and some of the successes that you've had financially working your way through the educational system.

Well, I think we can start with my failures since I'm very different from many of the individuals in the early retirement/financial independence blogosphere. Basically up until 31, I was totally clueless. It'd be fair to call me a good time. I enjoyed life and I traveled and basically piecemeal things and never had a clue what I was doing.

And at some point around 27, I got my first full teaching job, you know, and I would get my money, living at home. I think I made $18,000 a year my first year. And that was enough to enjoy life. And of course, I spent every dime, put nothing back.

And I tell you all that because if you're an older listener and you're thinking, "Oh, well, I'm 40. It's over for me." That's not true at all. OK? If you're older, if you've been clueless, there's still a lot of options you have in your life. So let me say, like I said, I, you know, earlier in life, I played basketball in El Salvador, Argentina, traveled Brazil.

So, you know, I kind of had some of my retirement up front. I really had a lot of adventure, a lot of fun, and a lot of what I call work avoidance. So I didn't do a lot, you know. So I become a teacher, age 27, full time. About 31, I'm realizing I need to do something.

And I decided to go to grad school. Up to that point, I had zero debt. So, you know, I was able to avoid debt, which was really great. And I realized that in retrospect, that I didn't get myself behind the eight ball. But I promptly, my wife and I took on $40,000 of debt to go to grad school.

At what age were you married? We got married, I guess I was, we weren't married at the time. We went out there together and just kind of, we knew we wanted to do something different. So I got married at 33 and she was 31. But you've been together doing finances and whatnot together for a long time.

Yeah, it's been over 20 years now. And before I go on, having, you know, your life partner, you can't put a price on that. And that has really helped in so many ways, including wealth building, which I'll explain later. But at any rate, we go and we picked up $40,000 in student loans.

We both got MBAs and I did another, I was doing two degrees simultaneously. I did a master's for Spanish and ESL education in addition to my MBA. So 33, find myself, you know, over $40,000 in the hole. So I go overseas to Saudi Arabia and knowing I need to at least get up to zero.

Bear in mind, my net worth is still negative. And after two years, I got up to zero. And wow, what a liberating feeling that was. Absolutely. And so, you know, here I am, I'm 35 years old. I've got a net worth of zero and I'm feeling smug and happy about that.

But it's funny because you would think a guy or a couple with MBAs would know something about money. Well, that's not true, you know. To us at that point, money was very theoretical because we never really had any. You know what I mean? And so even though on paper, oh, we're the whiz-bang MBAers.

And well, so anyway, I had a lot of learning to do about money still. And being overseas in Saudi, there's not a lot to do, so I was doing a lot of reading. And I'll never forget, I came across, I believe it was Bogle on mutual funds. And I read that and then I started understanding, you know, the benefits of passive investing, what Bogle terms the tyranny of compounding costs.

And it all became pretty clear to me that I need to save money and I knew where I needed to put it. And so I started getting a notion and another thing that really impacted me about that same time, I was vacationing in New Orleans visiting my parents. And anyway, I came across a book that I cannot believe I do not hear cited in the personal finance circles more frequently.

Paul Terrahorst, his book, "Cashing in on the American Dream to Retire at 35." Great book. I haven't read it. Oh my gosh. I mean, this was like a thunderbolt to me. This is the granddad of early retirement. This guy, around 1980, you know, he retired at 35 and he's 60 something a day and he hasn't worked since.

He lives in Argentina, Thailand. So that really resonated with me. So I realized, okay, if I can build up some net worth and I'll have some financial leeway, I can do that. So basically after hitting the zero mark, I stayed three more years in Saudi and at 38 we left after 9/11 with a net worth of, I've looked at my records, more or less $100,000.

That's pretty accurate. All right. So, you know, granted, unlike many teachers, most teachers, I did have $100,000 leg up, but at the same time I was 38. So I wasn't a spring chicken. Come back to the States and I'm thinking, well, we didn't really know what we wanted to do.

Thought we might go overseas and teach on the international school circuit, but I had to get my wife certified. So we interviewed in Georgia and we found a job in LaGrange, Georgia, public school job, you know, and they were going to help my wife get certified. And first year between us, we made $85,000.

All right. Yeah. And I'm thinking, wow, I thought teachers don't get paid any money because, you know, the last time I'd worked stateside as a teacher, I'd made $18,000, like I mentioned. Right. So, all right. So I'm like, okay, we'll try this. We'll get certified. At a minimum, we can jump ship and go do the international school circuit.

Well, then I realized, oh, well, let's see, what are my investment vehicles here as a teacher? And this was my real education. I started researching, you know, about what teachers have to invest in. And I found out that instead of a 401(k), they have 403(b)s. And I started reading and I came across a site, which I'm pretty sure you're familiar with, 403(b) wise.

And that was a pretty new site at the time. And I learned about some of the pitfalls of the 403(b) investing. And primarily what those are is that they use annuity products, which tend to be very expensive. Right. They're tax-sheltered annuities. Tax-sheltered annuities, TSA, right? And I started reading and I just realized, you know, wow, they're just so unregulated at the district level.

And so, you know, I remember my employer, they gave us a list of 403(b) providers. And, you know, I think there was a disclaimer on it. Basically, we don't recommend anybody here. But, you know, if they're on a list, you assume they've been approved at some level as being decent.

Educators, let me say this right now, don't assume that ever. Because you're looking at some of the most fee-bloated financial products you've ever seen. But anyway, so first thing I did, I called down the provider list. And half the numbers were disconnected. And then, you know, I don't want to say names of who these companies are, you know, for, I guess, litigation reasons.

But at any rate, I started looking around and I learned how to go into a site and pull out the prospectus and pull out the insurance charge and the mutual fund charge and add them together. And you see that you're well over 2% a year in fees. Now, that might sound insignificant to many people listening.

But the reality is, I can walk you over to Vanguard at this very moment and we can get a retail product that invests in the whole U.S. stock market for five basis points, 0.05 of a percent. So the question always asked, would you pay $40 for something you can get for $1?

And it's as simple as that. I started, you know, I learned more about these annuity products. They have surrender charges. So if you want to move your money, you get you basically skim your account. That's the way I view it. It's skimming. You know, they have, you know, what is it?

I forget how they phrase it, but they take your money, you know, so it's your money. But until you invest it with them and it magically becomes their money. So anyway, I realized, man, I don't want to do anything with this. So I started reading. I read about Tia Cref and I knew they had a 403B.

And I first week at my job, no one knows who the heck I am, you know. And I sent out a district wide email saying why we needed to have Tia Cref added to the provider list. Good for you. Yeah. And, you know, and I, you know, I didn't realize what a big deal it was.

I just did it. And I, you know, I really thought about this letter and put it out there. And then the CFO guy said, he wrote back and said, hey, if you get 25 signatures, we'll add. So I had 25 signatures before a week. And so at least I added Tia Cref.

And, you know, that was good because at least, you know, it was a cost effective product versus all the fee bloated products that we had on the provider list. And, you know, I'm a capitalist. I believe in competition. Absolutely. And when you put somebody good on the list, all of a sudden people, you know, people, you know, the other financial advisors, you know, they're there.

I would tell them, yeah, I'm the guy that got that Tia Cref here. And you would just see them look at me like, oh, my God. You know, I just, I was instantly perceived as a threat. And about a year or two later, I got a Vanguard 403B added.

And so all of a sudden I've got two good choices. Real quick, real quick. Yeah, go ahead. No, because I want to ask a question. Do you know what the fees are, the Vanguard charges for their 403B product? I've never researched it and I'm curious if you know. It's been a while since I was in that, but there was, it was just, if I remember right, it was $20 a year account management fee.

But if you had over the $10,000, which my wife and I did, there was no even account management fee and it was just regular underlying mutual fund charges. That was it. Right. Okay. I need to do some research on that because, and I'm thrilled that you did that, because the plans that have been serving teachers, I mean, teachers have not been well served.

And I've never been inside the educational system, so I don't know, as far as in that, I don't know what it, like, I don't know why it exists. I suspect there's a little bit of backscratching happening on various levels, but that's just purely me being skeptical. Yeah. Because the teaching teacher market has not been well served over the years and there hasn't been a lot of market competition.

And I'm thrilled that you can tell this story about, because oftentimes, in my experience, when teachers feel very intimidated, I don't know why, but feel very intimidated by some of the financial lingo, and all it takes is bringing in, you know, raise a little bit of, raise some questions and bring the market pressure to bear.

And that's the best thing that can happen is bring in some competition and that will lower prices phenomenally. So I'm really glad that you did that and can tell that story. Yeah. And since, you know, we had a good option, my wife and I, you know, making $85,000 a year, we didn't have our son yet, and, you know, we're used to living low on the hog, so to speak.

First year, 2003, we did $30,000. Awesome. We maxed the 403(b) and we did our Vanguard IRAs. Awesome. And since then, you know, that's the minimum we've saved in a year since then. We've gone as high as $91,000 in a year. And that's--we use the 403(b) IRAs and 457s to build wealth.

And let's see, about 2008, there was the IRS Reform Act or some legislation to kind of curtail the Wild West aspects of 403(b), the 403(b) market. So my district was looking to, you know, pair the provider list and come up with a plan agreed on by everyone. And that's when I got to serve on a benefits committee, and we looked at all that.

And, you know, being that I was big on Vanguard and Teocraft-type options, low-cost options, you know, you get on a committee, and that was a real eye-opener for me. I see how committees work and how next thing you know, you have no control over where things are going because I think cost are your most important factors in your investing.

Now, I understand a 403(b), it's not just me investing, it's everybody in the district. I got that. Some people need more attention than others. Some people don't want any help at all. That would be me. And then there's some people that need help and everything, you know. Well, anyway, you know, we had a consultant, and I just remember, you know, we're talking about compensation, and I remember seeing 10 basis points a quarter to service the plan.

I'm thinking, "40 basis points? I mean, I can go to a target retirement for 17, and that's double." You know, and that's the way my mind works, you know, and I'm very cost-conscious on investing costs. And I realized, "Wow." You know, I guess my point is when you get on these committees and people reform options, you can get better products, but in the financial world, better does not mean good.

Usually it means far less bad, but, you know, I was talking to one of the board members, and they were like, "So let me hear your honest assessment." And I said, "Essentially, we've gone from a smorgasbord of manure to a manure sub." And, you know, I mean, you know, you get older.

I'm 50 now, and it gets easier to speak your mind. That's the kind of thing I wouldn't have said in my youth, but it had to be said. And I realized at that point, you know, we were going to go with what we'd all agreed on, you know, and I had obviously had reservations, but I realized if I'm going to take care of my investing, I'm going to have to do things in a radical sense, you know.

So my wife and I, we were looking for a change, and it's about 2009, and we need a change of scenery, and we decided, look, we would quit our jobs so we could do two things. We could, one, move our money from 403(b)s to our Vanguard rollover IRAs, and then, you know, when you, quote, unquote, "separate service," you can move your money.

You know, that's some of the limits of these retirement plans. You're kind of locked in until you--and the second thing this would allow us to do, sometime around 2006, I imagine, I started putting some money in a 457, and a 457 is sometimes referred to as deferred compensation plan, and this is one of the ironies of being a teacher, even though a lot of people, you know, they don't make as much money as maybe other private sector jobs, but you basically have two 401(k)-type retirement plans in many districts.

So we were blowing out the 403(b)s, fully funding them, and then I was fully funding my 457. So around 2009, I think we had between us $90,000 in our 457, parked in a fixed account, getting 2% a year. Well, the big plan in my head, and I explained it to my wife, wrote it down on paper, and we were going to quit our jobs and take new jobs, okay?

And at those new jobs, we were going to fully fund every account available to us, all right? And we were going to live off the proceeds of the 457. So from 2009 to 2012, three academic years, we lived off that $90,000, about $30,000 a year, and the remnants of our checks.

And during those three years, 2009 to 2012, we saved $250,000 in three years on our teaching salaries. Do you remember your salaries at that point in time? Yeah, I think we were slated at my previous school to make about $124,000 between us. And then, so at this new job, in my mind, we were going to take a pay cut, but because my wife had some supplements built in and whatnot, and this new district didn't even have a local supplement, they had zero, but I was saying, "Okay, we're going to have to eat it a little bit." Actually, we made a little more, so I think we made like $125,000.

Yeah, and then after a year, it was a small district, and after a year, they wanted me to do something in administrative and be a basketball coach, and I did all that, and then we were making like $130,000 a year. That's great. Yeah, you know, and so, yeah, I'm not making a million, but $130,000 is definitely not peanuts.

Sure. And we were living in a small South Georgian town. I mean, I say small, I'm talking one stoplight. Wow. And I wrote about this in my blog, I'm sure you read it, you know, how we saved $250,000 by taking "crappy" jobs. And I say "crappy" in quotations because that was the best job I ever had.

I loved it there. Right. But, you know, prior to taking that job, I would tell people we were going to this town, Statenville, in Eccles County. No one knew where it was, even lifelong Georgia residents. I mean, you're talking backwater because it's the next county--it's the county right before the Okefenokee Swamp.

Nice. Yeah, we're talking woods. I like backwoods Georgia. Sometimes if I'm coming up on--I come up 95 and then I'll cut through Georgia if I'm going over to 75 or something like that. And I like backwoods Georgia. If you want to get in the sticks, you can get in the sticks in backwoods Georgia.

It's just a cool place. I enjoy driving through. Yeah, and it definitely worked for us. And, you know, I kind of view those three years--you know, if anyone's ever read the book, "A Year in Provence." Yeah, we were out in the country, you know, I used to do the most awesome trail runs and barbecue.

It was just great. I loved it. My son loved it. And we think of that very fondly and a lot of great people. But your pay scale was based upon the Georgia pay scale, right? Yes, that's the key. So this is one of the things that many times people don't exploit is a lot of times you can find an inefficiency.

So in something like living in downtown Atlanta, you're going to be on the--probably, I'm guessing, and correct me if I'm wrong--you're going to be on the same or a similar pay scale in downtown Atlanta as you are in rural Georgia. But a guarantee your cost of living is going to be substantially cheaper in rural Georgia than it is in downtown Atlanta.

And so you can exploit that difference there and make a massive difference in your lifestyle. Well, that's very true because, you know, if you go, say, work in Cobb County, Fulton County, you'll get a local supplement, maybe $5,000, I don't know, $6,000. Well, what's that going to do for you in Atlanta?

There's so many things that you can go spend your money on. And I worked in Cobb County early in my career for a year, year and a half. And, you know, I spent all my money. There are things to do--sporting events, bars, you name it. Plus, it's a marginal increase.

And here's the other thing, is that many times if you're willing to relocate, if you can relocate from a higher cost of living--it's like younger people don't seem to get this as much as older people. But if you can go and you can relocate from a higher cost of living place to a lower cost of living place, even with a reduction in income on the top end, you can have a bigger lifestyle and save more.

Because an extra $6,000 on a household income of $100,000 versus an extra $6,000, you know, to $106,000 or whatever the number is, the lifestyle cost of Atlanta and then the tax cost on the incremental $6,000, you don't wind up with that much of a difference. But if you can earn $100,000 in a town where the median income is just at the poverty line probably, then it makes a massive difference.

And I would usually--I would rather--I'd rather live in, I don't know, Tennessee or Georgia and earn local median wages than live in San Francisco and earn local median wages. And there'd be a much better standard of living in Tennessee or in Georgia than in San Francisco at median wages.

Now, if you're a tech entrepreneur and you're making $4 million a year, San Francisco, fine, go for it. But at median wages, there's going to be a better standard of living, a higher standard of living in Alabama or Tennessee. Yeah, and I'm thinking back to some of the cost.

I think I paid $750 to rent a three-two brick ranch house. Right. You know, $750 a month. And I had just a huge field behind me that was always full of poblano chilies. And the guy said, "Hey, you can just pick anything you want out of there." Wow. You know, and it was so relaxing.

Right. And by doing that, you know, basically we went from about $400,000 in wealth to about $700 in three years. That's fantastic. Yeah, and the point, not to be forgotten, is we loved it. Okay. So now you're probably wondering, "Why the heck did you leave?" Well, you know, we found ourselves with $220,000 sitting in fixed accounts in annuity products.

And, you know, it's kind of like, well, you know, you got to be radical. You have to quit your job to move your money. And so by doing that, we were able to move. We did move most of our money, the 403(b) money. And at that job, there was something just fantastic.

We didn't have Social Security in that district. Oh, great. Not only we didn't have to pay it, the district had a 6% annuity they put in at the annuity company. And that all fell to our side of the ledger. Wow. So that turned out to be another $20,000 that we got.

And that's why I say we made $250,000. That's fantastic. We saved $230,000 ourselves. But anyway, so we moved that money, got it to our Vanguard IRAs. And I left some of the money in the 457(c) and I currently use that money as kind of like my financial independence/emergency fund.

We pull from that as needed. And currently we have about $70,000 in that. Since we left our jobs and we went back to our old town, LaGrange, where we have a home, and our plan was to travel, take a year off. Well, my wife took a job because it turned out she needed literally one month to be vested in the teacher retirement plan.

Really? Yeah. So she took a job and I took a job. And she liked her job pretty much. But I realized within five days I had made a huge mistake. And I basically asked the superintendent to let me on my contract and he did. Thank God. I think I'd have been miserable that year.

And I guess that was my first toe into extreme early retirement. I just did kind of what I wanted to that year, which meant a lot of jogging and cooking. I wasn't as prolific as a blogger as I should have been. You're a retiree. You're not a blogger. Come on.

I guess I keep thinking in the back of my head that someday I'm just going to start cranking out these articles. They never seem to happen. But I just enjoyed life and I realized, wow, it doesn't cost a lot. And I learned this at the previous location in the country.

It doesn't cost a lot of money to have a good time. Sure. If you've got some low-cost hobbies, which mine are basic working out and jogging and reading. You can listen to Spotify. It costs nothing. We don't have cable anymore. We all use Netflix. And my costs are so low for entertainment, but I have so many options.

It's mind-boggling. Do you think of yourself as ultra frugal? No, actually, I don't at all. I just kind of look, like all you guys, I've read Mr. Money Mustache and he really made an impact on me. I'm always seeking value. And I remember before I even went to South Georgia, just feeling that I was getting hammered on my cable expense.

For example, I was paying $131 a month for cable and internet. And they want me to pay $131 a month and I still have to watch commercials? No, this really pissed me off. Pardon my French. And so we went to Eccles in South Georgia. We just revamped everything. We went low-end and we realized, wow, I'm not missing out on anything.

I think we're paying, I wrote it down here today, I think it was 50, 55 bucks a month. And prior to that, we were paying with a Vonage account, like $165 a month. So that's $1,200 a year. Am I real frugal? I mean, yeah, I am frugal. But I'm not like, you're not going to see me on that show, Misers, or something, where people are dumpster diving.

Do you have any idea what your annual expenses are at this point? If you were going to guess. Someone asked me how I live on $18,000 a year, and I don't live on $18,000 a year, but I started looking through it. If I didn't have a mortgage on the house in LaGrange, I think I could live, with groceries and all, I would say we're living somewhere, I don't know, let's just round up, about $20,000 a year.

You said $20,000 or $40,000? $20,000. Yeah, and that includes a $285 a month high-deductible health plan that I got on the private market, and gas, car tags, I put it all on a spreadsheet. It was closer to $18,000, but I just rounded it up for simplicity's sake here. But I think I could do well on that.

The reason that I'm asking is because my experience has been, a lot of times, you'll have different people that will come from different perspectives. Many people listening to this show have been exposed to concepts of early retirement, extreme frugality, things like that, and they would say, "Wow, yeah, you're living well." But actually, my goal is that people with an above-average interest in money from the general population would come and listen to this show, and they would hear, and say, "$2,000 a month?

How do you live on $2,000 a month?" Or $20,000 a year, whatever the number is. My experience has been that many times, the people like you who are living on a steady source of income, they don't actually feel that they're being ultra-frugal. My wife and I, we live on about $3,000 a month in West Palm, and we do not consider ourselves to be ultra-frugal by any chance.

We don't really limit our spending. I don't keep a budget on a monthly basis and say, "This is what we're allowed to spend." We just kind of live. But the difference is that I've observed, and I'm not putting myself out as the example, but I'm saying in talking with people and in reading and things, is that there are a few embedded lifestyle costs.

That if you make certain choices, you will always have that structural high cost. And if you make certain other choices, you will always have a structurally lower cost. So the fact that you like to read and that you like to work out, if your entertainment is to go and join a gym and your entertainment is to get some books from the library and buy some books on Amazon and watch Netflix, and if that's what you consider to be entertaining, that's dramatically different than the person who really prefers offshore fishing and need a $150,000 boat.

You need fuel to go for a day offshore, $150 bucks of fuel. Well, there's a structural cost of a massive amount of money right there. I had a former coworker that said – he had a big boat and he said, "My boat's a $100,000 a year habit." And it's true.

Now, he had the money. He could do it comfortably. So there's the structural cost. There's also a structural cost of choosing a location. So I live in West Palm Beach and it's structurally going to cost me more for everything than it is for you in Georgia. But yet the incomes – so I know the local salaries for the local school board and they're lower than what you're describing there.

So you have structurally higher costs and structurally lower income and that makes the difference. So my point is that people don't have to be ultra frugal in the sense of never – I read a book one time and it was a really wacky book about scavenging. And the lady who wrote it, I mean it was just wacky.

I read some stuff from it to my wife and we were cracking up when I was reading it because this lady was hardcore. It was a funny book but she was hardcore about how scavengers in modern society are going to take over the world. But she describes this scenario where she and – she's over at a friend's house.

She and a friend are over at another friend's house and this friend wants to leave a note for the mailman who's coming. And so she goes – so the friend that they were visiting walks over to her desk and pulls out a nice sheet of fancy, crisp, new stationery, writes her note for the mailman, "Please leave the package on the porch," and walks and puts it to the front door and tapes it to the front door for the mailman.

And the lady who wrote the book is sitting there just gasping in horror because there's paper everywhere in the house. There's envelopes in the trash. There's scratch paper. She didn't need to use the new piece of paper to write the note for the mailman. And the way she wrote it was it sounded like her relationship with that lady was – and she comes back and she's continuing the conversation and she looks at him and is like, "Why are you looking at me so strange?" And it was like it brought a massive rift in their relationship because she had used a new piece of paper to leave the note.

So that kind of thinking, that drives me a little nuts. Hey, if you want to do that, good for you. Go for it. I think it's cool to recycle stuff. But to let that – that really turns a lot of people off, this idea that you have to reuse the backside of every single envelope.

Sometimes you can't just get a piece of paper and leave a note. That turns a lot of people off. But you didn't have to – you're not recycling every single envelope. You just simply have some structural, embedded habits that are serving you well. Yes, definitely. I always think about this.

A library card is free. I pay – here in my new town, I'm in a new South Georgia town, paying 25 bucks a month for an internet connection that brings everything in the world to me. That's 25 bucks. And the house I'm renting, a 3-2 brick ranch, 750 bucks.

And I do most of the cooking. We don't eat out as much and not so much to avoid spending. But I went to a kind of – I did Tim Ferriss' low-carb diet a few years ago, and I promptly lost 35 pounds in two months. Good for you. And I feel awesome.

I feel better than I felt in my 20s, literally. And so I don't like going out to eat because I don't eat that way anymore. And so I do most of the cooking. Well, when you load up your kitchen, that doesn't cost a lot. And so I look at my other costs.

I think I bought some merch this year for my new job. I already had some brand-new khakis that I hadn't worn yet. So I don't need anything. And I don't want anything, so I'm very happy. I've heard you referenced in some other podcast, The Rational Optimist. Matt Ridley's book.

Yes, and I've read parts of it. And when you stop to think about it and you view the world as half full versus half empty, it's a phenomenal time to live. It really is. And people lose sight of that. I guess the reason I started the whole blog is that here's so many teachers, and this might make some people mad.

They poor mouth constantly. And you would think they had taken a vow of poverty. And I just wanted to show people you can build wealth on a teacher's salary. And the ultimate goal for my wife and I is to get a million dollar net worth. Okay. Having done it primarily as public school teachers.

And I'm certain we're going to do that, barring total Armageddon here. But, you know, that's why I started this whole thing. Let me just finish right here. I was going to tell you from age 48 to present, you know, we've taken new jobs down here in South Georgia again.

Currently sitting on a net worth about eight hundred fifty thousand dollars. Last week I set up my four fifty seven contributions with my employer. So every every month we're going to put eighty five hundred dollars away. Okay. And we plan on doing that for the next eleven months. And so in for twelve months work, we're going to save over because we're also going to do our IRAs with Vanguard.

We're going to save over one hundred thousand dollars pretty much for sure in this new quote unquote crappy job. Congratulations. That's phenomenal. Yeah. My point is you don't have to be a genius to do this. You know, a lot of times we talk to people about money. It's also, you know, being a Spanish teacher, like, oh, you're so smart, you speak Spanish.

Now, learn a foreign language is about reps and exposure. Right. And money is once you learn a few concepts, you know, and you you actually work the plan, it takes care of itself. You know, there's no magical money formula. It's like I mean, I wrote a few things down that basically summarize my belief.

That's a good time to go through them. This I came across this. I've heard somebody say this, and I think I read it from Jim Stovall. It said, you know, you can't eat your seed corn and expect a harvest in the fall. And, you know, we make one hundred thirty four thousand dollars a year right here in this job.

That does not mean I get to go out and spend one hundred thirty four thousand dollars a year. You cannot do things that I would deem that, you know, shooting yourself in the foot and then turn around, complain your foot hurts. That is insanity. And I see it all around me, you know, and I understand people get in situations and think I got it.

But I see a lot of people that could do so much better that just, you know, they don't, you know, but the first step is realizing, look, you're you're in an advanced economy. You're working hard. You're earning at least decent wages. Start putting at least twenty five percent away, you know, and you're going to start noticing a result.

Once you start, that starts building because then you'll think, well, how can I go to 30 percent or how can I, you know. Well, this ties into the next thing from Dr. Thomas Stanley, millionaire next door. Two key components from him. You have to learn how to play offense.

That means you generate income. Now, a lot of teachers say, well, I'm stuck on the pay scale. I don't really have any options. Well, I know here in Georgia, you got lots of options and they're not always easy. But let me let me tell you what we did in our case to generate more income.

I decided, well, you know, we both had our MBA, so we're getting paid at the master's level. And every advanced degree, you earn six thousand dollars more per year for your degree. So, like, theoretically, if you're earning if you have a bachelor's degree and I have a Ph.D., I would earn eighteen thousand dollars more a year than you, even though we do the same job.

And the same year's experience. Yeah. So and a lot of states are like that. So at any rate, my wife and I real quick hang out on the numbers. You said six thousand a year more. So you get six thousand for the master's and six thousand for the Ph.D.

But you said you would be earning eighteen thousand. Oh, yeah. I'm sorry. Six thousand for a master's. OK. Many states, Georgia included, they have what's called a specialist degree, which is kind of like after master's before Ph.D. That's six thousand more. OK. And then your Ph.D. or Ed. Six thousand.

So. Interesting. Yeah. And I believe Florida is the same way. So my wife and I jumped into an administrative program to become principals. And not that we were dying to become administrators, but we both you know, I'll be honest, we're not always the greatest students, but we have the academic tenacity, often called testicular fortitude, to just you know, I can I can get myself through things.

All right. And so we put our heads down, did it wasn't that hard. You know, it cost six thousand dollars for each degree. So after a year, it paid off. So what that meant, though, for us is we made a thousand dollars more a month, twelve thousand dollars a year for doing the same job.

OK, that's generating offense. That's income that that we can do something with. My first year in LaGrange, I I got approached, you know, first day. If I would like to work what they call extended day, which meant instead of me teaching three out of four periods a day, I would teach four out of four.

I would not have a planning period. And I can hear the teachers out there. They know that's a lot of work and it is. Trust me. But I talked to my father in law about it. And he's a very rational guy. And he was like, look, you're going to be there anyway.

You might as well get extra money. Well, what it turned out is if I did it both semesters, that was twenty five percent more on my paycheck. Wow. Yeah. You know, and I thought, wow, 25 percent more. Yeah, I'll do it. So my seven years at in LaGrange at LaGrange High, I did I did extend a day all seven years.

You know, now I put that money back, though. I mean, I would want to tell people this. If you're going to bust your butt and just, you know, be up late prepping and grading all those extra papers, don't view that money as a beer money and happy hour money.

Right. You know, you've got to put that money aside somewhere. Come on. So that's how we generated income. And there's other things that did. I was an assistant basketball coach and cross country coach. And, you know, my wife has done sponsored clubs like FBLA and the technology club and things of that nature.

When you get those little increments, that is not shopping money. You know, you use that to fund your IRA and 403B and whatnot. And then the other thing we've already talked about this, the third concept, you know, I said, don't eat your seed corn. Learn how to play offense.

And Dr. Stanley talks about playing defense. I mean, you know, pair your costs down. I mean, I'm not saying you've got to be a monk and and, you know, live a life without any luxury. But, you know, just realize, you know, that those costs eat into your ability to invest, you know.

And I think we have found a pretty nice equilibrium for us on that. You know, I wrote an article about, you know, how we've just totally revamped our Internet TV and phone scenario. We, you know, got rid of the landline. We, you know, I'm talking to you right now on my Skype account.

So I have a Skype subscription, unlimited U.S. calling with a real number. It's $60 a year. Wow. Five bucks a month. OK. A landline is 20 bucks a month. I think there might be more. I mean, some people are thinking, you know, it's more than that. I don't have cable.

I've got Netflix that comes through my twenty five dollar a month Internet connection. OK. And I don't feel like I'm missing anything. So we've done things like that. My wife just recently got a Republic wireless cell phone. She's doing the ten dollar a month thing. And she's very happy with it.

And, you know, I'm a dinosaur. I don't have a cell phone. Good for you. Yeah. And when I tell my students that, they look at me like I'm the biggest freak. But, you know, with Internet, Facebook, Twitter, you can find me any any time. It's not hard to get in touch with me.

But, you know, I mentioned the cooking. That's really helped curtail costs. And, you know, paradoxically, I enjoy going out to eat now so much more because it's not an everyday occurrence. Right. And like when I when I do decide that, for example, there's a Mexican restaurant here we'll go to and it's, you know, South Georgia, six ninety nine a person.

All you can eat. And it's got fajitas, guacamole and all these things I'm not going to make at home. Right. You know, and it's a splurge. I used to do it on my cheat day on Saturday. And it's like, wow, that was really value. I really enjoyed that. So, you know, we have curtailed the costs.

We've generated income as best we can. And now we're we're just saving like crazy, hardcore saving as Stash calls it. That's where we are. It's one comment on the going out to eat. It's funny how your perspective changes. I for years, you know, working as a financial planner, one of the primary ways that I would interact with clients and prospective clients was over food.

And I would often schedule two lunches. So I would have a lunch at eleven thirty and a lunch at one o'clock and eat out for both of those. And then it wasn't infrequent prior to being married. It was and I was kind of engaged in the social circle. It wasn't infrequent for me to eat out for dinner as well.

And I got so sick of eating out. And I developed little techniques and little little tools and whatnot to figure out how to lower the cost and lower it. But, you know, I entertained so much over dinner and I got so sick and tired of eating out. Well, for the last three months, my wife and I, we quit eating sugar, quit eating out of sugar and anything.

And so you and but our that which was a lot harder for her than me. She loves her sugar. I'm overweight. She's not. But she loves her sugar. So our our splurge is that the last day of the month, each month that we would go out and eat sugar and eat as much as we could and like, you know, have a big have a big meal.

So this last Friday or whatever, the last 10 days ago, we went out to the local Friday's restaurant and we really I usually try to avoid chain restaurants because I don't enjoy it. But we decided we wanted their dessert that they had one of their brownie cookie things. So we decided to go to the chain restaurant and we just enjoyed it.

Like it was it was really fun. We had unlimited appetizers for 10 bucks. They had this deal and then we had this dessert and we had a really great time and we enjoyed our meal out. And I'm watching, though, several other families that are just simply there. And it was clear that they were there not as an occasion, but as for just simply because that was their course of the week that they were eating out.

And we were really enjoying it versus I was looking at a couple and they just didn't seem like they were really paying much attention to their dining experience. And I thought this is exactly what I used to do because I just got so sick. I just dined out because that was what I needed to do or what I felt I needed to do.

And but this is how our grandparents did it. Dining out was an occasion. It was an it was an enjoyable thing. And we enjoy our eating out once a month more than we did in the past when we were both working during the day. And you'd have to go out because you didn't have any dinner.

And you just it's a different enjoyment of life. It's not necessarily you're not. We didn't do it because we want to save money. That wasn't necessarily the goal, but just simply that we were enjoying enjoying the experience more. Yeah. And that's what we've noticed, too. You know, we have a place here in town on Friday, Saturday night.

They have all you can eat seafood on the buffet. Oh, fun. And barbecue. And it's 1099. So, you know, maybe once a month, twice a month, we'll go out there and it's awesome because, you know, it's a treat. And I believe I read I can't remember the name of the book, but it was talking about that was one of the things I suggested.

Make you make things a treat. Right. Instead of getting a latte every day. You know, doesn't mean you never have one, but make it a special occasion and it tastes that much better. Well, that's why dining has become for us. And, you know, don't feel sorry for us because I'm not bragging or anything, but I'm pretty good.

And, you know, I wanted to tie into this, you know, when you kind of do something unorthodox and radical, like we do with our finances, it makes you start questioning other things in your life. Like, you know, a lot of common, quote, unquote, knowledge that I better stop using that quote, unquote.

I do it, too. I do it. Yeah. But it's called being a reader. You always think, quote, unquote. Yeah. You know, I say all these things and I'm basically stealing ideas from the various people I read in the blogosphere, too. That's your thing. If I stole your lines, guys, I apologize.

But so I was needing to lose some weight. You know, I just I was trying to get a tech one night in a basketball game and I yelled at the ref and he wouldn't listen to me. And then I said, that's a damn foul. And he looked me right in the eye and he wouldn't take me up.

And oh, my God, did that make me mad. Wow. But but so after the game, I look at myself in the mirror and my ears are like red as roses. And I've got at that point a five year old son. I think I got to get this in check.

So, you know, I mentioned I did the slow carb diet. And when I stopped eating sugars, starches and grains and I could have them one day a week on my cheat day. And then I felt I saw how much better I felt. I just really made me double down on on my assumptions.

You know, you know, people think, oh, I need a new car. I need a new man. I don't I question everything now, you know. And, you know, here it is three years later. I'm like, I'm six, seven. I weigh 240. I feel very fit. I cook awesome meals. I never limit calories.

And I'm saving eighty five hundred bucks a month. My wife and I join life. Got an awesome son. Beautiful wife. Life is good, you know, but a lot of people when they talk about being an educator. Oh, man, it just sucks. Right. You know, it was like, no, people snap out of it.

Take control of your life, you know, and, you know, part of me is teacher. The other half of me is an old coach slash athlete. And, you know, if you want something, you're going to have to do it. And I'm very big on intrinsic motivation. And that trumps all, you know, you can be, you know, not the brightest or sharpest pencil in the box, but that that your motivation will overcome a lot of things.

And I don't want to come across as a motivational speaker here. But at some point you got to look in the mirror and say, damn it, I'm going to do it. No one's going to stop me. Right. You know, and I remember earlier in my life, I would blame, you know, the economy's bad.

And it was bad when I graduated. And in the mid 80s, there was I remember people going to work for the bank for like 18000 a year, you know, and having to buy a two thousand dollar wardrobe to work an eighteen thousand dollar job. And I thought, oh, my God, you know, and you saw, well, it's just not going to be able to make it happen.

And but then, you know, at some point, I can't remember when I just decided, you know, oh, I know what it was. I'd been traveling. And, you know, when you travel, you ride the buses through Mexico and Central America, which I did. Yeah. You get a real appreciation for the opportunities you have here.

That is for sure. And I would find myself, I was bitching and moaning, just feeling embarrassed, you know, and since then I've lived in Saudi Arabia and I've I've been to India and everybody should spend 10 minutes in India and just put them back on a plane and fly them home.

I mean, I like India. Don't get me wrong. And people are really nice, but there's some poverty issues there that people here just it's beyond their comprehension. And once you start viewing the states in the West or that filter, you kind of feel bad when you complain. You know, it's go out and shape your destiny.

You know, it's yours to shape. Right. I feel the same way when I come back from abroad. I always have to be I try to be careful to limit when I talk about economics, because I view there to be basically two different sets of advice. Set of advice. One is if you're living in the United States of America, you don't have a thing to complain about.

This is with I get very frustrated about many things going on, but this is the land of opportunity. And there is more opportunity here than anywhere else. And there are more people who are able to help you if you're not able to to take advantage of the opportunity. But when you're in the rest of the world, there is a whole nother.

It's an it's another world. And I don't you know, not having spent enough time, I've learned. One of the biggest shock for me was studying abroad in college. I was very much optimistic. You can apply these things anywhere in the world. I actually go and find, wait a second, there are some structural things that are extremely challenging.

And I realized that I better keep my mouth shut about most of the global global issues and just simply focus on, you know, what I might actually know a little bit about. Yeah, well, I think I heard you on one of the interviews, one of your guests, I think it was Jacob at Early Retirement Extreme.

Right. I can't change the world, but I can change my situation. Right. That is so true, you know, and I think about my own case. I was not a great undergrad student. I was more, you know, concerned with shooting hoops and drinking beer. And I hated school so much as an undergrad.

I went to school in summer school to graduate early. I just want to get over with. And, you know, so as I matured and started seeing, you know, oh, there's other things out there. And that I'm interested in, I went back to school at in my late 20s. What you can't just do that in many countries.

You don't get to. There is no option where you take your money if you have it and go to college in the late 20s. Now you can get online and do stuff like that from anywhere in the world. But, you know, I went and basically, you know, made up ground for my insane youth.

But and I look back at that and, you know, that was great. The structure here in America will allow you to reinvent yourself, you know, and I've seen all this stuff. What is it? A green learning tree. Right. Yeah. You go online and learn a code and make Web pages.

And it's minimal cost. You know, there's in my own town here, there's grants to go to the technical college and you can get, you know, you can learn how to do stuff on a computer, run a barber, whatever you want. You know, it's here, you know. Right. And I'm very aware of that.

And I also tend to watch what immigrants do here in America. You know, I have some Indian students and I have a lot of Hispanic students. And I'm always curious to see how they arrive here with nothing. And lo and behold, you know, a couple of years later, they're running businesses.

They got houses and hey, America, it's a wake up call. Just follow their lead. You know, I have a show plan. Live like an immigrant at some point. I don't know when I'll do it. But I remember a story that I just heard recently. There was a former financial advisor who was telling it to me.

And he said he had a guy walked into his office and he said – this guy barely spoke English. And I don't remember what country he was from. But he walked into his office and he said, "I want to buy a job." And the guy said – I need to go and get more details.

He said, "What do you mean?" He's like, "Oh, you mean you want to go and get a job?" He's like, "No, I want to buy a job." And he gives him some referrals too because he wanted to help him out in some way, the advisor to the guy. And he gives him some referrals to a couple of people and he goes and he talks to them.

And he comes back and he says, "No, like those people, they wanted to give me a job." He said, "Oh, you want to start a business?" And so as I recall the story that the advisor wasn't able to give him much help. Guy comes back in like one year later and he was a new immigrant, didn't have any money.

I don't remember the industry but he had basically started and was in charge of running this quite large business. And he had done it with nothing, simply through sheer force of will. And he just kept asking, kept asking, kept asking in order to create this business. And the advisor was stunned because as a financial advisor, it's very easy to get jaded because you're dealing with a broad cross-section of the population.

And so a lot of times, it's easy to get frustrated when you're pleading with somebody to save 5% of their income or to save 10% of their income. And then you have this immigrant walk in, doesn't speak English, doesn't have any money and all of a sudden a year later they're running a big business.

It's an amazing, amazing experience to expand your view of what's possible. And there's a lot we can learn from new immigrants. I love hanging out with new immigrants whenever I can find them. I came across a very interesting thread on the Boglehead site one day. And you just came from New Orleans and you can see in a lot of ways New Orleans is just very stagnant economically and dependent on tourism.

But anyway, I think they taught at UNO some economics professors and they basically said, "If you're not connected to New Orleans, you can't do anything." Well, I guess this was around sometime in the '70s and they had a lot of Vietnamese boat people come. And they said what the Vietnamese did in like two years made them rethink everything because they arrived with nothing, no English, and he said they owned businesses and homes within two years.

And they were debt-free. He was like, "What is going on?" And it just ties into what you're talking about. Something's going on and we're missing the boat. Maybe we should look at that population and see what we can learn from them. Yeah, I'm interested to explore that. I didn't get a chance because I wasn't there long enough.

But I had this weird experience. I went to I think it's called Café du Monde or Café Monde, something like that. Yeah, it's the famous place where they make those little donut things. And every single one of the servers was Asian, like every single one of them. And I was curious.

I didn't get a chance to find out but I was wondering why was every server Asian? Because there was a massive black population but there wasn't a single black server in the restaurant. And I wondered about it and I didn't get a chance to find out what's going on as far as the immigrant community.

And the ladies, they were mostly ladies and they didn't speak very much English. But it would be interesting to explore a little bit and figure out what's going on there. Go ahead. No, I was just going to say I'm just looking at my notes here and I wrote down some things.

At some point I want to give some teachers, I guess, some actionable advice. Go for it. Well, let me just run through this real quick. I talked about the phases and how it's incremental. I just wrote here my pillars of wealth building. And the first one I have here is debt avoidance.

And this is what saved our tails early. Even though we were kind of clueless, my wife and I, working, living paycheck to paycheck, we didn't take on a lot of debt. What a stroke of luck that was because I see now if you get behind the eight ball on that, it's hard to overcome that unless you're going to file bankruptcy.

And I forget the bankruptcy laws. How many times can you file bankruptcy? The problem is that most of the debt, I don't know how many times you can file bankruptcy. It's becoming more challenging and the full discharge bankruptcies are more challenging. And it's a little bit funky. But the key one is that a lot of educators have student loan debt, and you can't file bankruptcy on that.

I've met with a number of educators with massive amounts of student loan debt, and bankruptcy isn't even an option there. Yeah, and there are some loan curtailment programs if you teach in high-need areas that will, after three or four years, waive your debt. If I had some debt, I would be definitely looking at doing something like that and put my head down and suck it up and pay it off.

Because being debt-free, I'm telling you, you realize you're a free person. People don't have claim to your future earnings. And debt avoidance, that means if you're going to go for a grad degree, my undergrad degree is from a very prestigious college, and I think it's $40,000 a year. The thing is, it's kind of ironic, is that when I had just that degree and I was looking for a job, the market was bad.

And it's kind of floundering. Then I went and I did a degree at Southern Miss and probably a third-tier MBA, Texas A&M International in Laredo. I'm not putting those schools down. I love those places. But a lot of people say, "Oh, yeah, those are just big state schools." Well, I got two degrees for about $10,000 from those places.

And those really bumped my career up. So my point is, would you be better served getting a $10,000 degree or a $50,000 prestigious degree, particularly for a teacher, getting a master's from, say, Vanderbilt? I'm not picking on them, but I'm sure their program costs a lot more than, say, Georgia State.

There's a massive disparity in the difference between the need for certification versus the need for education versus the need for pedigree. And people often don't actually look through this in a logical way. And I wanted to touch on, as you go through your pillars, I wanted to touch on the things that you mentioned about how to maximize a teaching contract.

In many jobs, not at all, but in many jobs, even when your income is supposedly stagnant, there might be many ways to maximize the benefits. And I did a show on this called "How I Become a Millionaire on a Minimum Wage Job at Walmart." And what I tried to emphasize is that if you're going to go and work in a job like that, you need to maximize your benefits.

And I illustrated how, if you take advantage of the 401(k) matching program, the stock purchase program, discounted cost of insurance, discounted cost of groceries, educational benefits, things like that. If you will take advantage of those programs, you can actually substantially, on a percentage basis, increase your wage, even if the actual wage isn't going up.

Same thing in teaching. If you can go and you can do, like you said, where you can go from bachelor's degree to PhD program, and that allows for an $18,000 increase in your situation, in your pay. Let's say you couldn't save on the income for a bachelor's degree, but in that situation you could make an additional $18,000 a year.

Let's run some quick math here, and let's say you save all of that $18,000, so $18,000 a year. Let's put this in, and let's say you are able to get your degree from 35 to 65. So let's do this for 30 years, 10% interest, zero starting value. So at 65, that winds up being $18,000 invested from 35 to 65 at 10% interest is $3,256,981.

So even if you set your lifestyle on the bachelor's degree, but you were able to say, "I'm going to commit myself, and I'm going to go out and spend the $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 box that I need just to check the box," because they can't discriminate against the Vanderbilt degree versus the online degree.

It's got to be an accredited degree, but all the administrator needs to do is check the box. Master's degree, boom, done. And then your 25% pay increase for working the extra period. I haven't worked as a teacher, so I don't know the extra stress, but man, that would be worth it every day.

I would do that in an instant because when you've got 25% increase, that's a massive percentage increase in a job that supposedly doesn't have those options. Yeah, and I think my first year on a specialist, and I was doing extended day on a block, I think I made $78,000.

Right, right. And now I'm in a situation where I'm at the lower end of the pay scale as far as the years experienced. I think 21 here in Georgia, and I'm down there, and I think my base this year is $66,000. I'm not coaching or anything this year, and so I'm making $66,000 because of my specialist and my experience.

Right. And had I loaded up on a specialist degree that costs a lot of money, I'd still be servicing that debt. Right. And so go to state school. Try not to take out a loan if you don't have to. My last degree, I just kind of would send $500 or pay with my credit card and pay that off real quick.

Right, right. And avoid taking on debt. Another thing we've done, I'm still driving. I've got a 2002 Mitsubishi Gallant. I bought it in 2004 from Enterprise Rental Car Sales. It's got 270,000 miles on it. Awesome. It's still running well enough. I'm going to drive that baby till it collapses.

And those things don't mean anything to me. I like being able to save my money. I don't have payments. So, yeah, avoid debt. Yeah, keep going with your pillars. Yeah. Two, hardcore savings via retirement accounts. That has really helped us. I think Mr. Money Mustache wrote a post explaining basically how you don't have to get 20% a year on your return if you're saving $50,000, $60,000, $70,000 a year.

We're all in on retirement accounts now. Our goal every year is to max them out. The magnetist refers to front-loading. I refer to this as PERMA front-loading. From here on out, I defer every dime in this order. 457, 403B, my IRA, and my health savings account. Those things are getting fattened up.

And that comes out currently about $100,000, a little more than $100,000 for my wife and I. So, you know, I view a $134,000-a-year teaching job as an opportunity to save $100,000. Right. Okay, so am I a genius? No. Hardcore savings. I'm committed to that. My wife is too. And we put them in the retirement accounts.

All right. Point three ties in with that. I'm a firm believer in tax minimization. Well, how do I keep my taxes minimal or optimize them or however you want to phrase it? Well, by using these tax-preferred accounts, you know, let's say I make $130,000 a year, but I save $70,000 a year.

The government says, "Look, we want you to be self-sufficient in your old age. We're going to allow you to take that off your income for the year." So I didn't make $130,000. In the government's eyes, I made $60,000. Okay? People need to understand this, is that all that $70,000 I just mentioned, it went to my side of the ledger.

Uncle Sam was his tax buy and Mr. Peach State, their tax buy is minimized. They have to go to the end of the tax line. The way most people do it is they don't defer any of their income. They take their income, their check, their paycheck. They forget that FICA gets first dibs, then benefits, then Uncle Sam, Mr.

Peach State, and then you get the remainders of your check. Mine goes at this current job, FICA, my benefits, then it all goes to me. And poor old Uncle Sam and Mr. Peach State, they're looking pretty haggard back there. They haven't eaten in months. And they're not going to eat until about December or November.

And the thing is, it's not that I'm an anarchist or anything. There's many government things that frustrate me, like everyone. But at the end of the day, I'm doing what's best for me and my family first so that I'm not a liability to society later in life. That's the way I view it.

And so by minimizing your taxes, you feel like you have control. In your email to me, you said you wanted me to talk about that. One of the concepts I've written about is called federal income tax, your free money. Everyone needs to do this basic calculation. They need to determine what the government considers their free money.

And the way you do that, and I've done it for a family of three for 2015. Are you still there? I'm here. Keep going. Okay, great. So you take the number of personal exemptions, and I believe they're going up to 4,000. That's what the article I read said. So three times 4,000 is $12,000.

And the standard deduction for 2015 will be $12,600. So right off the bat, we're looking at what, $24,600? Right. All right. For the three of us, the government says you can earn that much and no zero federal income tax. Okay, well, we have a child, and he qualifies for a $1,000 tax credit.

Well, I divide that by 0.1, with 10%, because that's the first tax bracket. That means I can earn $10,000 more before I owe any federal income tax. So now we're at a situation where it's $34,600. Well, I mean, you've told me you live in West Palm, which I--you know, when I hear "West Palm," I think "big money," and you can live on that amount.

Well, and you have a child, too. You're like me. Right. Congratulations, because there's nothing like being a parent. But $3,000 a month, you pretty much don't have to pay any federal income tax. Exactly. And nor do I. Now, let's say something happens and you need more money. This is kind of the second layer of my free money article.

I said, you know, no other 10% tax bracket ends, and it's basically $18,450. So that means, you know, we've got to subtract out the credit. But we have $8,450 we can earn, which would bump us up to $43,050. So on $43,000, we'll say you're going to owe $845 federal income tax.

That is an effective tax rate of--drum roll, please--1.96%. That's phenomenal. That's great. You know, and so I forget how I came across this. I started monkeying around on a piece of paper and a pencil one day, and it's like, wow. You know, because everybody's always--all people do is complain about taxes.

Right. People, take control of your taxes. You decide how much you pay in taxes. Right, and if you understand the political process behind how the taxes are created, then it makes it clear to you you can choose to just simply follow the process and exploit the laws the way that they're written.

I interrupted you. Keep going, and then I'll come back and make my point. Keep going. Well, okay, and then so I went and I figured out my Georgia tax, and I did that, and I've done my taxes long enough to where I know. I would owe basically $1,600 in Georgia tax.

That's 3.72. My total effective tax rate would be $2,448, or 5.7%. And that's living here in Georgia. If I were to move to Florida, I'd get rid of that $1,600. You know what I'm saying? Right. So, okay, sure, everybody complains about this or that, but I'm paying 5.69%. I'm living a great life.

Right. And so you've got to be aware. Everyone should be able to tell you what their free money is, what their free money plus the remainder of the 10% bracket is, and at a minimum, everybody should shoot for at least qualifying for the saver's credit. Right. I'm looking. I think it's $60,000, you know, and at least have those targets in your head and make decisions based on that.

Going forward, you know, with increased tax rates and whatnot, I see people that have multiple homes and car payments, they're going to have problems because they're not going to be able to live under this income amount, and they're going to have to take their paycheck as income, and they're going to pay the most on it.

So, you know, if you want to have all those various perks, and, you know, like you mentioned, the guys with the boats and the houses, you're going to pay more than someone who's just kind of enjoying life and structuring their costs like this. But tax minimization is key. Do you still work in a district that allows you to opt out of the Social Security contributions?

Oh, no. That is--oh, my gosh. Boy, do I wish I did. Because that was one of the other ones I was going to mention is that, for example, something like that, let's say that you were still in that district, that's an automatic 6.2% raise. Now, I would want to investigate the details of the--you know, what are they still-- what they're contributing the money to.

You need to make sure, if you're going to opt out of that, you need to make sure that you have provided for yourself and for your own needs with the proper insurances and with the proper savings. But if you can do something like that, there's an automatic 6.2% increase in wage.

And if in an occupation, which I often hear many teachers, at least here locally, complaining about the lack of increases in pay, there's an automatic 6.2% increase if you can opt out of that as well. Exactly. And the job that I referenced before that did not have Social Security, not only that, they paid 6% into an account.

You follow me? Right. And then with the small increase in pay that we actually got, there were three components--no Social Security, an actual Social Security substitution plan, and a small pay increase that we actually--that surprised us. I put it to paper one day. We made more than $15,000 a year by just doing that move to South Georgia-- That's great.

--in 2009. That's great. Yeah. Let me go to my fourth pillar here. Go for it. Prudent investing. Okay. Now, this is where I might get angry sometimes. When you decide, "I'm going to start saving," I would tell teachers, "Think of this. If you're not going to save more than $5,500 a year," and I recommend that you do, you need to at least have an IRA account at somewhere that's low cost, maybe a Schwab account using their market index funds that are like single-digit basis points, like 0.9%, or a Vanguard fund paying five basis points or ten or whatever it is.

You need something that is rock-bottom cost. Now, here's a problem you're going to bump up to is that as you look at your 403(b) options, oh, man, be prepared to hold your nose. It is the Wild West and some of the worst things you'll ever come across. They're all fee-bloated annuity contracts.

You have to realize where you can invest your money and where you will only be saving your money. I view a 403(b) plan in my mind, that is a future rollover IRA. It is not a vehicle to do investing in, and I can hear all the financial advisors blowing their gaskets on that comment, but I'm sorry, fellas.

You're bringing me crappy products. I'm not investing in them because what you have in those products, you have variable annuity fee certainty coupled with market uncertainty. So, you know, I'm a capitalist, like I said. I put up 100% of the capital. I bear 100% of the risk, and depending on what the market does, I might net from 50% of the market gains, or John Boca can show you a scenario where you net 20% of market gains over 60 years.

If I'm going to put the capital up and bear the risk, I sure as heck want to walk away with the market growth, the market return. The way this is set up now, I view it as a gigantic skimming operation, and to me it's disgraceful because there's no fiduciary oversight.

Financial advisors, that term to me is like the term crab with a K. It's just a marketing name, and my problem is they're not held to a fiduciary standard. They're held to a suitability standard, and that is totally different, we all know, but most teachers don't know that. Like I just saw people being sold variable annuities.

They just think that's all you have to do, and then I found out in my district we have access to an open architecture structure where I can pay 15 basis points a year to get any investment I want, but everyone's jumping into these variable annuities because they're being sold variable annuities, and I'm sorry.

I know I get worked up on this, but the problem is that it sounds insignificant, fees of 2%, 2.5%, that will siphon off your market returns over periods of 10, 20, 30, 40 years. I believe that if you're going to put the money up, you get to reap the benefits.

So that said, 403(b) is not for investing people. You need to park it in probably a fixed annuity, what do you call it, a fixed account where you're getting 2% a year. Sure, you're losing to 3% inflation every year, I got it. However, you do not want to be locking into 2% a year fees, and then your value drops because the market drops, and they're still taking that 2% every year.

People wonder why their accounts never keep growing. That's the reason. The other thing you have to be very aware of in 403(b)s and 457s are surrender charges, which, like I was talking about the things that are available in my current district, the guy's like, "Well, yeah, our surrender charges, it's seven years, it's within three years, it's 7%, four years, 6%." So if I want to move my money, I'm supposed to get skimmed 7%?

Yeah, I mean, that's the way they view it. They view it as their money. And so don't let people beat you out of your money. I mean, sure, it's legal, but it's not ethical to me. It really irritates the hell out of me. So your 403(b)s, the future IRA, only use an annuity product that does not have surrender charges.

If they have surrender charges, just tell the financial advisor, "Non-starter, not doing it," and you find someone else that does. If they don't have anything, you might just be stuck with your Vanguard IRA. As far as your 457, I view that as a financial independence account and like an emergency savings account.

I will use that money when I separate service because there is no pre-59.5 early withdrawal penalty. It does not have the 10% penalty like 403(b)s, IRAs, and 401(k)s have. So when you leave your job, you can pull from that money and use it as you need to for living expenses.

Just bear in mind that generally they hold out 20% for taxes. And with some basic tax planning like we just talked about, you can make sure you get that money back. Where I do my real investing is in my IRA and my rollover IRAs because I can control the costs there.

That's a lot of things, but you have to understand that costs will devour your return. What would have been, frankly, a small leak will sink a big ship, basically, I'm paraphrasing. And that's the way I view mutual fund expenses. I haven't worked enough in the educational market to actually have boots on the ground.

I've merely read and observed from the outside. And feel free to correct me if you think I'm wrong. My biggest thing that I would say is that if you are an educator and you want something to change, you have to break the cartel of access that--and from some of the articles I've read, and I'm not sure what your experience is in Georgia, but I would hold a lot of the unions responsible for this.

And I cannot prove it, but I smell something very fishy because it seems as though the market forces that should have been working in the 403(b) market, I have not seen them working there. And what you can usually find is that when you have costs that remain at a fixed high rate, that's probably because there is a cartel in control and there is collusion among the parties.

And that can only be broken with information and with people making their decisions. And for the teachers, if you want to hold your unions responsible for something, hold them responsible for that because they've sold a lot of teachers up the river, at least just in my observation, in that world.

And just in the way that you--the thing is with the freedom of information today and the easy access in exactly the same way that you were able to get your district's plans adjusted, there are dozens of companies that would love to be able to come in and compete for the money.

Whether it's Vanguard, whether it's Schwab, whether it's any--I mean, there are dozens of companies that would want to come in and compete. But the lack of competition is what leads to the high price, and the only people that are going to have any power to change that is the teachers themselves.

Do you agree? Disagree? Yeah, I mean--but, you know, the thing is I did some reform, and then eventually we lost those because-- So why did you lose it? Well, because the districts, they always want to use a paternalistic model, or what I heard one advisor--I was in Mexico, and he used the phrase "dependency model." They say, "Oh, well, teachers basically are too dumb." That's basically what they're saying, "to learn about finances because it's so complex." You know, I'm sorry, that's horse manure.

So everyone thinks they need an advisor. "Oh, that's my guy." What they don't understand is he's not working for free, and I'm not saying they should work for free, but they don't understand how they're compensated. Because they'll say, "Well, I'm not compensated from your account." No, what it is, they're compensated from the insurance company who takes your money from your account.

You know what I mean? So here in Georgia, we're a right-to-work state, so we don't have a union setting all that up for us. And everybody in Georgia, while you hear this, you need to know this. Any school district in Georgia can vote to add the peak state reserves.

You can give your district access to a 401(k) and a 457 with rock-bottom costs. I think three districts have added it. I've tried to get it added at districts, and it's like conveying the importance. I've explained it. It never happens. But there's an option that any school district in Georgia could add.

Three have it. It's amazing to me. I think as a public school teacher in Georgia, any teacher shouldn't have to go through their district to get it. They should be able to get it directly. It would be cost-effective. They've got economies of scale. There is an advice component in there.

If you want to pay--I can't remember if it's 20 or 30 points--to actually talk on the phone with an advisor who can explain things to you. Or if you want to be a minimalist guy like me and invest in rock-bottom index funds. But we don't have it. God only knows what's happening in some of those other states when you see all the shenanigans.

I've read about the pension in Illinois, so I assume their 401(k) plans are just as bad as their 403(b) plans. So, yeah, teachers, you're going to have to piss some people off. I've done it, and I don't care anymore. They don't have to like it. It's not their birthright to skim my account and take my money.

Legally, it's theft. And everybody says, "Oh, yeah, they can do it. It's just the way it is." Not acceptable. So I wrote an article for 403(b)-wise about that. I don't know if you ever came across it. No, I didn't. How I escaped my 403(b) by quitting my job. I take every job with an eye on the exit door, because as we build up $300,000 of wealth, I'm going to move my money and go invest it somewhere.

I'm not going to let these guys pillage it. So, consequently, that kind of makes me a migrant teacher, in a sense. I'm a short-timer. But that's what I have to do. That makes me offbeat and I march into a different drum. But it's also helped me take control of my finances and maximize my wealth.

I'd encourage you to keep fighting your fight, because, and this is my observation, don't get mad at me, but it's a rare teacher. So there's a certain personality type, I think, that is attracted to the profession of teaching. And that's different than people who like to teach. Like, I love to teach, but I can't imagine myself.

I've thought seriously about going into the teaching system, because I enjoy teaching. I've taught junior achievement classes. I love interacting with the kids. To me, they had lifestyle appeals to me, just the ability to inspire young people. I would love the actual process of teaching, but I cannot imagine going into the business and profession of teaching, because I would be so unhappy dealing with the administration and the administrative red tape and just all the crap.

I have strong opinions about it, but not from personal experience. I've never met a teacher I didn't like, necessarily. It's just the whole environment. So the environment is very much an environment of conformity, and it forces teachers into conformity. And that means that you have a certain personality type that is likelier to be found in that versus somebody who comes from a more busted-open perspective.

And so those of you, like you, Ed, who are in that profession, who can be on the inside, you've got to lead the charge, because there are many teachers who simply are not knowledgeable, and they don't care to become knowledgeable. They lack their own ability to learn and to educate themselves.

They lack confidence in their ability, or they lack desire or something like that. And it's guys like you that are going to have to do it, because where money goes, people will follow and look for it. And there is a lot of money when you've got something that's funded with taxpayer dollars, where you have a very steady source of income, and as much as I would like to eliminate the Department of Education, I'm a very minority viewpoint in that.

So you have a lot of money flowing in there. You have a lot of money sitting there. And it's going to attract a lot of people who are going after that money. And it's up to guys like you on the inside to break it open. And I think 20 years from now it'll look very different, but it's not going to look different unless you do something different.

Well, and the prospects of reform--I'm not optimistic on that, and generally I'm an optimistic person, but when you understand how the financial services industry and insurance-- we'll just call it big money basically--they fund both political parties, Democrats and Republicans. So any time--I believe it was the Democratic congressman over in Miller in California-- this guy was really going after some reform issues, and nothing's really happened.

And if he can't get it done under this administration, being that he's a Democrat, it's just not going to happen. So, teachers, I hate to say this, you might be on your own. You might have to make some hard choices where you have to say, "You know what? I'm quitting this job.

I'm going to the district down the street. Roll my money. Start saving hard." And there's radical personal finance for you. Let me give some teachers some actionable advice on prudent investing. There's been, in the last 10 years, the development of something called a target retirement account. The old Ronco "set it and forget it" products.

This is basically--maybe I'm showing my age with that comment-- but you don't have to do a lot of thinking on this. You figure out what year you want to retire. Say you want to retire in 2030, like you could take the Vanguard 2030. For 17 basis points, I believe it is, they have a fund where the allocation is set.

As you get closer to that year 2030, it becomes less and less, we'll say, risky or aggressive. It becomes more of an income portfolio. So you don't have to do anything once you jump in there, all for 17 basis points, as opposed to your financial advisor's variable new product where you're paying at least probably 200 basis points.

You're going to save so much in cost right there. That's going to go to your side of the ledger. The next choice you have is-- another simple product is Vanguard Life Strategy Fund, for example. You get the same amount, 17 to 20 basis points. You can get a growth fund, and it's allocated, and all the allocations are constantly done for you.

You don't have to do any thinking. I use these in my own IRA accounts. I have some Life Strategy funds, I have some index funds that just track the whole market, and I have a Target Retirement account. I'm not an investing novice, but I like the simplicity aspect. You have to understand the financial services industry wants complexity and dependency.

They want you to come grovel to them and grab their hand and say, "Leave me, sir." Take charge. You need to be in charge of your own investing. It will pay off handsomely, trust me. Absolutely. Any other pillars that you have on your list of pillars? I just have the fifth one here that I talked about.

Embrace frugal living. Once you cut your costs and you find a happy medium where you feel like you're enjoying your life and you've got the control on the expenses in it, wow, it feels very liberating. You'll probably notice that you're not missing anything. You kind of take the old 80/20 approach.

What's those 20% of things that give you 80% of enjoyment? For me, it was reading, having Internet access, and basic benefits of life. I'm not a very complicated person. Let me look real quick. I have the frugality thing here. Let me just say cover costs. Do you have anything to add to that?

No, I agree with you, and I would just encourage people, especially who are teachers, is apply the same things that you have applied to become knowledgeable about your subject area to becoming knowledgeable about your money. The key is that you have to develop-- I have a slightly nuanced view on some of the things that most people harp on.

Ed, you've developed a focus on learning the things that you need to learn, and that focus, that development of that focus, would enable you to be successful no matter what the products that are offered to you, no matter whether it were stocks or some entirely different mindset, because you've developed the focus on learning.

So just what I would encourage teachers is focus on, in the same way that you want to inspire your students to learn, focus on studying, investing, and financial planning. I had a teacher of mine in high school, retired a millionaire plus, and never did anything except teaching, but just learned some basic concepts and applied them, and then enjoy the lifestyle associated with being a teacher, and enjoy all the perks of it, maximize the compensation, and do some intelligent things.

It's not that complicated. It may not be easy, but it's not complicated, and I think you've brought that out in the comments that you've made. Well, and the other thing is--and I did my CFP stuff through Florida State, thinking I might want to be a financial planner at some point, but there's so many different parts to that.

But what I came to realize is I don't have to learn all those things. I need to learn what's important to me. And if you're a teacher with basically zero net worth, all right, start small, get an IRA. Go find out from the human resource department, what do we have here for 403(b), do we have a 457, and then you just need to go online, and this will be a little boring, but learn how to read the prospectus, and you've got to add insurance costs with the investing costs.

Then you'll have an idea, and always keep in the back of your head, you can go get a crappy retail product at Vanguard for five basis points. I just want people to understand that you don't have to be a genius. You can have a late start. I had a late start to my financial independence.

It's not that complicated, and if you ever want to send me a question, I'll answer questions. I'll try to get a little better on my blogging. I feel I have people tell me all the time, "I need more stuff out of you. We'd like to hear it." Leave me alone.

I want to enjoy my life. It's millionaireeducator.com, right? Yeah, millionaireeducator.com. Are you and your wife going to keep teaching? Are you going to go and travel? What are your plans for the future? Oh, yeah. Well, it's very interesting because just this morning I got an email saying, "Oh, we're in Singapore." I could see how I could really optimize my finances by getting some foreign earned income, saving every dime of that, taking my son all over the world.

I've kind of got a split personality on that. I like it where I am now, and my son likes his school, but there's that siren song of working overseas. I know how that could be very lucrative to us. For sure. I also see myself maybe doing one, two-year gigs and then taking a year off.

I don't know. There's a whole lot of possibilities out there. Last February we did a little geo-arbitrage experiment. We went down to Cancun and spent six weeks. We took last year off and homeschooled our child just to do something different. We needed to recharge our batteries. It cost us $1,500 once we had a studio apartment down in Cancun for three people.

$1,500 x 12 = $18,000 a year. It's tropical. I have to admit, I think about those things quite a bit. I'm dipping my toe into travel hacking thanks to the Mad Scientist and Noob Traveler. Those guys have really shown me there's a lot of possibilities. I've built up close to 700,000 frequent flyer miles.

Good for you. Doing the manufactured spin. When I look forward, I'm thinking, "I don't really have to work a job anymore." If I want to go out and goof off, I'll be the first to tell you I'm dying to take my family to Brazil. I spent time in Brazil long ago.

I'd love to hear my son speak in Portuguese. It's just a great place. I loved it. Good for you. You should do it. That would make a big difference to him. How old is he? He's eight. Take a few years off and go travel with him and build out his education.

I don't have to tell you how to live your life, but I would just crave... Think of the impact that could have in his life of traveling for a few years for him as part of his education, his understanding of the world. The proximity to places like Argentina, Uruguay, Chile...

Oh my God, it's mind-blowing. That's what might happen in the future. I'm also trying to work on getting a tax. I've got no taxable investing. It's embarrassing. That's one of the big failures I've done. I've got nothing. All my stuff is in retirement accounts. I'm trying to figure out how to siphon some of those things over to reusable accounts.

I see the advantage now of using some of those things that I didn't previously understand. Like I said, you do what's good for you in the moment. As you get more knowledge and confidence in the personal finance world, people can branch out. Exactly. If you guys ever have a question, please send me an email.

If you'd ever like to have me on again, I'm always available. Absolutely. Millionaireeducator.com. Anywhere else you want people to look for you? You'll find me there. I think I have a Twitter account. I don't do much with that. But yeah, you can find me at Millionaireeducator.com. Cool. Ed, thanks so much for coming on today.

I appreciate it. I appreciate you having me, Joshua. That was a lot of fun for me. Nothing in there that any of us couldn't do, right? Told you. No really no special sauce. Just a matter of figuring out what the standard sauce is, tweaking it a few different intelligent ways, and then following through.

Ed, thank you for coming on. What an awesome, awesome information. I really think it's inspirational and informational. Keep doing what you're doing. Go check out Ed's site at Millionaireeducator.com. You'll be able to consume a lot of his information in a written form, which for many people is preferable. It also does a little bit better for some of the detailed numbers than the audio form does.

So check out Millionaireeducator.com. If you've enjoyed the show, make sure to subscribe. You can find us in iTunes. You can find us on Stitcher. Make sure to subscribe to the show. We're here every day, Monday through Friday, with inspirational interviews, with detailed information. All of it is actionable. A little bit of inspiration from me every now and then, or at least people say so.

If you're interested in the topic of education, I'm now going to play for you the special bonus part of our interview, where he talks about his plan to hack a college degree in 6 to 12 months for 5 to 7,000 bucks. We talk through a little bit of a philosophy toward education.

I really believe that education is key to the financial independence process in every single way, both our ability to educate ourselves and also our ability to educate our family and our children. It makes a big deal in people's finances, which is why I'm doing a whole series on it.

If it seems like too much for those of you who are regular listeners, I apologize if we're kind of hammering on education a lot. The show is not the Radical Education Podcast, I promise, but this is so, so important to personal finance and to financial independence. That's why I'm spending a lot of time on it right now, but it's not always going to be that way.

So enjoy the special bonus audio. Make sure if this is your first time by the show, for the show, make sure to come by and subscribe. I think we'd be glad to have you here listening every day. If you're willing, I want to take just a moment longer and I'd like to ask you a couple questions about education.

And I want to stick this out. And depending on how this conversation goes, I may stick this in afterward, as a bonus part on this episode. Have you thought about leaving the formal education system and setting up your own school, something like that, where you can take your skills of teaching and maybe make a bigger impact on your students?

I think if I were younger, I would consider that. I have found myself, you know, I mentioned we homeschooled last year. There are so many technological developments happening related to education that I feel that the current model just doesn't, it can't take advantage of them. You know, what we do now is what we did a hundred years ago.

And I mean, I've been on the administrative end briefly in that for two years where I did discipline and I've sat in all this administrative meetings. And, you know, you mentioned the Department of Education. We would get so many, so much information about, you know, maybe migrant education, ESL and programs.

It's like drinking from a fire hose. I don't know how you're supposed to stay on top of it. You're just inundated with information and requirements, you know, because when you get money from the feds or even the state, it comes with strings attached. You've got to show where every dime's going.

And I don't know. I understand accountability. I got it. But when it just becomes a bureaucratic nightmare, that's what I see at the administrative level. And it doesn't suit my personality, my worldview. So what I have looked more at is basically educational hacks. Like one of my unfinished articles is, you know, how to hack a college degree in six months for under $7,000.

You know, there's so many things out there that could be done that aren't. And everyone's pushed to taking on all this debt, at least at the higher ed. At the high school level, I'm starting to see some things. Like even in this rural town I'm in, they have something called the Career Academy.

And so if you're not a traditional student, you can go there and basically -- I don't know how much of the component is self-study and online computer stuff. But it's geared toward getting you more like a technical education but with a high school degree. And you're more in control.

What I'm seeing at the high school level is these kids, they're in the Internet age. They're used to having a device and controlling information. Well, then you sit them down at a desk and you're saying, "Put your phones away. I'm going to need your undivided attention for an hour and a half." You know, you're trying to give them like the education I had as a middle schooler sometimes.

Their brains are wired differently now. And there's just a disconnect. And at the same time, when you've got 25, 30 kids, it's kind of hard to know what everybody -- what their individual learning styles are, what their interests are. And we're always encouraged to do that. But I'm sorry, I'm not a robot.

I'm not a computer. You know, you were doing large-scale education. So I think there's a lot of room for more individualized education. But it's not going to be happening at the public school level. It's going to be, you know, like you have in Florida, Florida Virtual School. I've seen that curriculum for Spanish.

It's really top-notch. It's tight. And the student's more in charge than the teacher. Well, when you bring them in a traditional classroom, the teacher's still in charge, and they don't want that. Mentally, they're not geared to that anymore. That's just me talking off the cuff there. Right, and I know -- go ahead.

I was going to say, to go out and start a school, I think the whole notion of a school is antiquated. You know, like the brick-and-mortar thing. Do you know what I mean? Right, right. I think you're going to see just more people. Like last year, we had so many choices with our son.

We could get a -- you know, like a home -- it's a state homeschool curriculum. We could go online with something called Easy Peasy, which was like a free Internet curriculum that some lady, incredibly prolific, has put together all this curriculum stuff, and it wasn't bad. Then there's like these, you know, religious-related curriculum.

You know, we liked that one just because it did emphasize right versus wrong, which is what -- that's a problem I'm having with, you know, a lot of the public school. It's just kind of like the whole notion of anything -- everything is great, and it's like, no, that's not true, you know?

We need -- that's one of the things we're failing, I think, in the countries that -- just basic moral compass. Well, that's judgmental, and everyone belongs to the cult of nonjudgment now, and, you know, you've got to have some boundaries, right? I'm just talking generally, not religiously. I agree.

So one of the things that I see, and I am more concerned about this, and very few people would hold this opinion, but I think there is a massive financial threat to teachers on the horizon, and it's the proliferation of educational opportunities. And I am not a teacher. I don't have any background in that, and I'm a layperson when it comes to actually studying it, but I have a one-year-old son, and I'm very interested, and I've been working hard to do my homework on the history of the school system, history of the public school system.

I've been very interested in the work of John Taylor Gatto. That was really an eye-opener to me. I never knew any of the history that he lays out. But then I try to balance that with looking at what actually is, and so I find it easy to come at things from an ideological perspective, but regardless of actually my personal ideology, when I look at the world around, what I see is that I see very little satisfaction with the government school system as it exists from all corners.

And I think that even with the implementation recently, look at the pushback that has happened over the last couple of years over the integration of the Common Core curriculum standards, and you're seeing – I'm seeing just a pushback that I've never seen in my short lifetime. I mean, there was little – I've never seen this much pushback.

And the challenge has been that in the past, for a parent to extricate their student out of the government school system was very challenging, and basically you had to commit one parent to educate the kids, or you had to go to a private school system or something like that.

But with the proliferation of the ability to provide education over the internet in digits, I think there's this massive opportunity, and more and more people are waking up to it. And because of the integration with things like the Florida Virtual School System, because of that, people are looking at it and saying, "Why should I do this?

Why should I send my kids? I'm worried for their safety. I'm worried for the productivity of their time." Look at the opportunities that are available through this other world. And I just think that – I don't know, but I've never seen – so I'm usually on the fringe of just about everything.

I've never seen so much discussion in the popular format about changing the school system. And I think 20 years from now, the school system is going to look very different than it looks today, and there are a lot of teachers that are going to be out of a job that currently today may be building their system on having a job.

But I also see a tremendous opportunity, and the need for great teachers is never going to go away, because all of us need a great teacher. And it's not that the ability – the aspect of the debate that I often see that I don't see well discussed is that it's not the teachers that are the problem, usually.

There are some really bad teachers, just like there are some horrible financial advisors, and there are some really rotten – there are some really rotten politicians, and there are some really rotten priests and pastors and things like that. So it's not – there are some bad teachers, but almost all the teachers I've ever interacted with really want to help their students in the absolute best way.

But it's the structural system that's been created around them that puts constraints on them. But there's an opportunity now that's never existed for teachers to go out and to be able to work with their students. And I just have this idea. One of the things I'd like to see developed is I'd love to see almost a return – and I haven't found anyone doing this.

I'm sure they're doing it. I haven't looked very hard. But I'd love to see guys like you who are skilled teachers being able to come together with a group of students. Maybe this would be like a 20 – 15 or 20 students, things like that, and almost like in the same way that some of the homeschooling co-ops do.

And you come together, and the parents – ultimately the kids are considered to be homeschooled, and the parents are the ones responsible. But they come together, and they orchestrate a 20-student type of situation. And because most of the instruction can be delivered over the internet, whether it's Khan Academy for their math instruction or whether it's Learning Tree or whatever it is, if they're studying programming or if they're studying history, there's some world-class history lectures available easily.

And then that allows the teacher to actually engage with the individual student. And then I think there's a business opportunity there. And if you charged $5,000 a year and you had 20 students, that's $100,000 of revenue. Now, I don't know the laws with it, but the laws will eventually catch up.

But I just think there's a real opportunity for some teachers to get out ahead and really lead that and bring back the individualized education of students and get them out of the school system and get them into an educational system. Yeah, there's – I just think about how the system is, like you say, so antiquated, and it doesn't – it's not able to individualize the student learning.

There's a push trying to do that, but it won't happen in this model. As far as, you know, like you say, being almost like the mentor learner to 20 kids, I could see how that would really work. And maybe that would be something more for a younger teacher who's very energetic.

That's kind of where I'm starting to peter out. But, yeah, I think you're on to something. What I would like to see – I want to get – I'd like to nurture a few high school graduates into a six-month accredited diploma via testing. So if you could ever steer some kids to me like that, this would be able to show it at the higher ed level.

But I see where you're coming from, having a one-year-old. I would say that you do have a good option with Florida Virtual, it seems to me. But, you know, you were mentioning – one of the things I'm always very cognizant of is the fact that institutions can be overtaken.

And, you know, and this has happened all the time. There's a lot of stuff that happens at the curriculum level. And I think – what was the gentleman, Gatto? Right, John Taylor Gatto. Yeah, I mean, you know, some people would say, you know, the cultural Marxism is being planted in the curriculum.

You know, and sometimes I really feel that. And it filters down. Next thing you know, they're teaching something in your district that you totally disagree with. You know, and like for me, one of my rubs now in modern days, Christians, they can just make fun of them. And, you know, most people would consider me a free thinker.

It's like, wow, you can just say anything about those people, just disparage them? So I think you're absolutely right. There's a lot of room for – it's a brave new world. And this model, I think about that. How are we going to fund teachers' pensions when we don't have the same number of teachers?

I don't see it as – I don't see it. And I need to be very careful because there is a difference between alarmism and looking at macro trends. No one knows how things will change, but they will change. In the same way that you can look at Social Security and you can say, well, clearly the program is destined for bankruptcy.

But that doesn't mean necessarily that today it's going to be bankrupt. It's just simply that things will change because it has always changed. And what I'm trying to see my way through – and I really struggle with it because I feel like I lack some of the critical thinking skills even to discern fact from fiction of even just the history.

I mean, the whole history of teachers' pensions. When you go back and you look at who originally funded the first teachers' pensions and what the teachers gave up in terms of their autonomy in order to get that teacher pension and the influence that was exerted over it. And it's very challenging for me to try to figure out how it actually works because just because you know where something came from doesn't mean that you know why it works the way that it does work.

So it's more of just simply a research project. I want to ask you about – for me currently. I want to ask you about your diploma, what you've been planning because I'm in the middle of – the show I released as we record this. The show I released a couple of days ago was actually – I'm doing at least a four or five-part series on paying for college.

And part one was teach your baby to read and that will have a major impact on their academic ability – that might have a major impact on their academic ability. And then number two is actually going to be avoid the government school system and/or work within it in a more accelerated way.

Because I think that an average student of average ability by the time they graduate from – by the time they reach 18, if they are allowed to guide their own education, that a parent who's involved can have – I mean they can have their accredited degree primarily through CLEP testing and then a little bit of additional coursework with an online school, something like that, can have their bachelor's by the time they graduate from 18 for very little money.

So walk me through, since you're actually – you've spent a lot of thinking about it, you're going to steal my thunder on it, but walk me through what your plan would be for doing your six-month plan with accredited testing. Okay. Here's what you have to understand. There are three accredited universities that have – basically they take all credit by exam.

There's no limit. They don't say we only take 30 hours, which would be a year. So at these places you need roughly 120 hours or 40 classes to get your degree. And I would view a degree like this more as a credential. I agree, 100%. It's purely certification. It's check in the box.

Yeah, check in the box because sometimes the employer just says, "Do you have a four-year degree?" "Yes, check." And it's like, "All right, here we go." So what I looked at is I'm more familiar with Excelsior College in – I believe it's in Albany, New York. And the reason I stumbled upon that is I have a number of transcripts and I sent them all there.

So I have one official transcript with them. Well, what I realized is I could take a CLEP test and something I don't have a credit on and get it sent there, and that helped me fulfill my teacher certification, the education component. So I did personal finance, a DSST course.

I don't know if you're familiar with those. There's CLEP and DSST. It used to be called Dante's. They're credit by exam, basically. It was 80 bucks for the test, $20 for the sitting fee. So I did that and I did a general history, social studies. I did nine hours of credit in basically two and a half hours of testing.

I mean, nine hours? That's almost a whole semester, right? Right. It's massive. And for 160 bucks, right? Or 80 times three, so it would have been – Well, no. Total with the sitting fee, 200 bucks. Okay. Cool. And I only had to drive out there two times to take the test.

Awesome. So no commuting. So anyway, that got me looking into the catalog at Excelsior. And I brought up general studies or liberal arts, kind of generic degree, very malleable. And then I realized that you could take some of the core CLEP tests that are worth six credits each. And then I started looking.

Well, there's one called Analyzing, Interpreting, Lit. And I pulled up the Georgia freshman literature requirements, the standards. And they overlap. So if you're a freshman English student in the state of Georgia, my son, I'm playing on this. When he's done with that course, he's taking that test. Absolutely. He's going to take that for 60 bucks.

He's going to bank six credit hours, the equivalent of two classes. What is it? American Lit? That's a junior year course. Okay. He's going to bank that. And British Lit. All right. Now we're at 18 credit hours. There's one for history and social studies. All right. There's one for humanities.

Now that one I'd have to do a little studying on. I don't think I'd pass that first time. When my son speaks Spanish, he'll get the score. Just get a 12. I think right there we're looking at 60 hours with there's a math one and a natural sciences, but which would fulfill those math.

But basically I identify I can't remember off the top of my head, seven or eight courses that would get the associate's degree requirements done right there. All right. And I think it was 800 bucks for those. That's awesome. Yeah. And so now we're looking at a scenario. We've got half the degree done.

We need 30 hours of electives and we need 30 hours of upper level courses slash concentration or major. Well, there are upper level courses primarily by that DSST organization. And all the military guys use this. So, you know, and you can also go as just a traditional student at a college and take, you know, there's always a provision to let you take courses, get permission from the department head.

Right. So if you want to take a junior level course. But I was thinking, OK, if some like if I were going to do a degree like that, I would probably do the English and a couple of history courses because I could probably pass those and get my degree requirements.

And you do have to do kind of like a capstone course from Excelsior College. That's. But I put it to paper and I think I get to like a little under seven thousand bucks. Right. You know, and and it could be done probably in six months, 12 months for sure.

Right. And but, you know, then you're thinking, wow, people are paying forty thousand dollars a year to go to these schools. And granted, I know there's a network if you go to Princeton and Vandy and Duke and places like that. But I just don't see you getting the bang for the buck anymore.

You don't. And that's the other thing that I never have. I always thought I've been watching this for years and I always thought I was the only one. And again, I'm used to being on the fringe of just about everything. And all of a sudden I start looking around.

I was like, wow, there's actually this massive popular uprising against the cost of college. And there's another cartel that's going to be changed. And and as people make these different choices that are are happening. I mean, the curriculum you just described and my son is so young, I don't know what the world's going to look like in 10 years.

But if I were guiding, you know, a 10 year old today, that's exactly what I would be guiding him into, is I would be focusing on for the first kind of basic half of school, I would be focusing purely on education. And so, you know, call it from from baby through, you know, I don't know the age, but I think of a lot of it as kind of like middle school years, whatever those is at 12, 13, 14.

That sounds right. So somewhere in that range, I would focus purely on education, ignore certification, fulfill whatever technical requirements your state requires, but focus on education and focus a lot on self-education, on building a love of of learning and and and nurturing that love of learning, largely with the largely with the interests of the student.

So so to me, I just a lot of focus on reading, a lot of focus on writing and a lot of focus on arithmetic. But then bringing the application of those subjects into into whatever the area of interest is. So you can learn math with many different things. It doesn't have to just be from a math textbook.

And you can write about many things and gain the skills of writing without having to write about Shakespeare in sixth grade if the kids not into Shakespeare. Right. And then as you kind of transition from those middle school years, then basically how what I would design as I would design the entire high school curriculum around a program of testing around CLEPS and OK, so I hadn't spent much time on the DSSTs, but around CLEPS or DSSTs.

And so if I'm looking at your idea at the DSST option here and there's one for business mathematics and there's a business law and astronomy, then the goal of the curriculum. So let's say we're going to do a two month study on astronomy there. We're going to spend two months on it.

We're going to read a bunch of books, whatever the books are that are going to prepare us for the exam. And then at the end of two months, that exam is going to be done. And then we're done with astronomy moving on with the idea being that by the time.

And then I want to integrate that with vocational skills. So by by focusing a lot on building a business, on building vocational skills and whatever vocation seems to be suited to to the child, with the idea being that basically by about the time that most students are graduating from high school, that the college degree is done through testing and that there are some established vocations there.

And then if if if the child wants to go on to study more, education is not necessarily something that you get from a classroom. So you can continue to focus on an education or if there's a need for a specialized degree program. So let's say that there's a very specialized field that you want to go into, whether it's, I don't know, architecture or some sort of engineering.

Well, then you're prepared. You've dealt with all the lower, lower level stuff. You can go right into and if you've built in, let's say you're going to go do, you know, chemistry research or something like that. You build that out with just actually doing it. And then you may need to go and take some undergraduate level chemistry courses and go right into the master's, master's degree program or something like that and do the research and skip all the crap of just getting the certification for forty thousand bucks.

Go straight to the research if you want to pursue the advanced credentials. That's the best idea I've come up with at this point. You are not crazy. I've been thinking this forever. And I, you know, in my own life, I kind of viewed my degrees were credentials. You know, as one of my professors, you know, all of a sudden when I got my master's for TESOL, I could get jobs.

And he referred to it as my union card, basically. You know, it's like you're legit. You've got this right for language education credential. And, yeah, from freshman year in high school to the end of your sophomore year in college, those six years are totally redundant. Right. And you should be able to test out all that stuff and get on with, like you said, more specialized learning.

I think, you know, in my own case, my son, I've got like twenty four thousand dollars sitting in an Ed Savings account. And I'm pissed at myself because I don't want higher ed to get that money now, I decided, because I think it's just it's a colossal waste of money in a lot of cases.

And I'm all for education. Don't get me wrong. Right. But but I in his case, I'm planning on doing something like you just said, is we're going to, you know, do a self study. We can watch stuff on Netflix and YouTube and read about it from the library and we go take the test.

What people need to remember, those tests are pass fail tests. Right. You know, it's like, yeah, are you competent? Boom. All right. And then you get credit. Right. And I think, you know, say at 18, you walk across the stage, get your high school diploma and then they make an announcement.

Oh, he has also gotten his diploma from Excelsior College. Right. You know, polite applause. Wow. How did he do that? Well, and then he'll be enrolling next year in an MBA program or wherever. Exactly. You know, and it probably in states far as I'm concerned. But, you know, there's just so many options and people.

We get intentional thinking and no, don't do that. There's just so many ways you can go about it. And I think about, you know, let's say you got that credential, you picked up like a CFP, maybe a master's. And so I don't know. You know, a master's only takes a year to do usually.

Right. And so now you're 21 with CFP and a master's. Right. And, you know, I mean, you might be 19, 20 with that. I'll tell you a book you might want to read. It's called The New Global Student. Have you heard of that? No, I haven't. I've never heard of it.

It really led to me have some led to me having a lot of out of the box thinking as far as education. There's got a lot of great stories in there about people have done unconventional things. But, yeah, I'm sure we're going to see in the next five to 10 years some huge upheaval in how education is done.

I don't know how I can say the same. Right. And I'm excited because I think it'll be good because I mean, the greatest thing I really am, I consider myself a rational optimist. And when you look at the freedom of information and you look at the ability of people to share things that work and things that are working, I mean, we are headed into, it already is a golden era in much of the world.

It really is to live in. With all of the problems that exist, I am sure there will be a lot of short-term upheaval, and we're going to face plenty of that because there always is. But in so many parts of the world, we're already living in a golden era.

And there's no reason to say that over the long term it's not going to get better and it's not going to expand. And you look at how, in many ways, freedom and standard of living is expanding to much of the world. And it's just, it's an amazing time to be alive, but you have to be, you can't take it for granted.

You can't say, "Oh, the same thing I've always done is changing." I mean, I look at, we talked a lot in today's show about the changes in the financial services business. And I've come at the tail end, but if you were to talk, I've spent a lot of time talking with some advisors who've been in the business for 40 years, 50 years, 30 years, guys that are kind of in their 70s, late 60s, 70s, still practicing a little bit here and there.

The changes that those guys have been through in their life is amazing. I bet. And when you look at just even since 1999, when the walls came down, when it used to be that if you were an insurance agent, you basically had to badmouth stocks because your annuities were better.

And when you were a stockbroker, you had to badmouth life insurance because your stocks were better. I mean, that world doesn't exist anymore. And so, and thank God it doesn't exist, because that was the worst thing that happened. But when you look at the pressure on fees, it is, I mean, I am, the consumer is going to win out of this whole thing in a massive way, because it's smoking in the same way that changes in the school system are going to smoke a lot of bad teachers out, and the great ones are going to shine, and the great ones are going to be doing better than ever.

The same thing is happening in the financial advice business and will happen, is that a lot of the really crappy financial advisors, they're done. There's no way to make it in a world. If you're not adding value in excess of your fees, you're done. But some of the great ones are going to have better careers than ever, because the playing field is more leveled.

So... Yeah, like you said, I agree with you. Going forward, there's a lot of reason for optimism, but still, you got to have your eye on what's going on. Absolutely. And there's, you know, like my son's case, we wanted to just take a year out of the curriculum, kind of assess where we were.

And, you know, homeschooling wasn't easy. That was a lot of work, and my wife and I are both teachers. Absolutely. My son, he didn't want me to teach him anything, you know. But Mama worked hard with him. But, you know, just being aware that you have other options is very key, you know.

With all this technology, I mean, just, you know, I'm the kind of person, I can watch the History Channel and learn a lot. Well, a lot of kids are like that. You could probably set up a viewing schedule and then have them go take, you know, the world history test, U.S.

history. That's 24 hours of credit right there that I bet probably 50% of kids could internalize enough knowledge just by watching videos to pass that test. Right. I agree. You know, so, yeah, just be aware of your options and don't--if it comes time to act on them, do it.

At some point, you got to do it. Don't just think about it. Yeah, absolutely. Well, cool. Thanks for doing this little bonus segment with me, Ed. I appreciate it again. Sure thing. My pleasure. If you ever need me, don't hesitate to call. The holidays start here at Ralph's with a variety of options to celebrate traditions old and new.

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