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It's more than just a ticket. On today's show, what would Joshua Sheets do if he won the lottery? Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast. My name is Joshua Sheets. This is episode 198. I'm your host. Thank you for being here. On today's show, I'm going to share with you my thoughts on winning the lottery.

Hopefully, it'll inspire you to think about your own thoughts. I think this is a useful thought experiment. And the fun thing about being a podcast host is you get to hear my thought experiment. The inspiration for today's show comes from a listener named Micah, who sent me this email.

He said, "So here's some fun questions for you." He says, "So this is a fun question that everyone loves to fantasize about. I hope it'll be fun for you to answer, but it could have a really boring answer, but I'm sure you'll surprise me somehow. Question, what would you do if you won the lottery?

And then part B, as a financial planner, what advice would you give to a client who had won the lottery? What would be the most optimal tax strategy? Would you take the payments or the lump sum? Would the upfront tax hit be worth it for the long-term capital gains, et cetera?" So, Micah, it's a fun question, and I'm going to answer it in the same spirit that it was asked, in a fun way.

But I'm also going to use it just to share about some things that I believe are important. As I thought through and prepared my notes in preparation for this show, it brought out some very important ideas that I think will benefit you at least to think about, which is why I'm sharing it, and I'll be doing it in detail.

But I want to start with just an observation that, as far as I'm concerned, I've already won the lottery. And I think probably so have you. I've already won the lottery of life. If you think about how incredibly privileged we all are in so many ways, for me, number one, just to be born at the time that I was born.

I was born in 1985. Just think of the incredible change that we're living through. Think about the time that, for example, just this business pursuit, which I'll talk about later in the show more, but just radical personal finance. It wasn't possible 30 years ago. And think about here I am hitting my stride as a young adult, and here I am able to use an incredible opportunity like this to communicate with so many people and hopefully be a source of encouragement to you, and you are to me.

I won the lottery. I was born in the United States of America, probably the most prosperous nation in the history of the world. Opportunity is on every street corner and basically every side. I was born and raised in one of the most prosperous states in the country and one of the most beautiful areas.

I live in a resort town that many people want to retire to and save for years to save their money and move to. I've been blessed with a lot of mental ability. I've been blessed with physical health. I'm able to learn quickly and easily. I don't struggle with academics.

That makes my life much easier than many people. I don't really have any significant learning disabilities. I think I have a tiny bit of dyslexia, but it really is not the kind of thing that's even worth mentioning. So I'm able to tackle new things. I have health. I have energy.

I was raised in probably one of the most amazing family environments that I can think of where I have two parents who are together and have been married for what, 50 years, 40 years, something like that. I was raised in a stable household. I have a bunch of brothers and sisters, which gives me an incredible opportunity.

I was the youngest of seven kids, which opens up an incredible opportunity to learn. You can watch all of your brothers and sisters make all the mistakes. It's just one of the things I did as a kid is I told my parents, I said, "I'll just watch them do it, and I just won't make their same mistakes." So I've been incredibly blessed.

I think probably just about all of you listening are the same way. Now, you might not have the list that I have, but you'll have your own list. And I wanted to start there because I believe it's a good way to frame this discussion. I'm going to answer this question in detail and in the spirit of fun of thinking, what would I actually do if I won the lottery?

But the problem is if I think about it as a hypothetical situation, that I'm unlikely to actually do something with it. But I think I've already won the lottery, and so have you. And so what do we do with that? In today's show, I'm going to talk a lot about the responsibility that winning a lottery or something similar would bring to my life and to your life.

But I'm going to emphasize the responsibility that we already have to do something with the things that we've been privileged and blessed to have. So with that framing up front, let's dig in. Quick note, today's show is going to be very personal to me, and it'll draw in some opinions that I hold and discussion of my own personal worldview, my own personal ideology.

Anytime you don't want to hear what I think, there's a little button on your MP3 player that has two little arrows that point to the right. That's a fast-forward button. You can push it anytime you want. But the challenge of this question is it's specifically asking what I would do if I won the lottery.

And so if you're talking about how I would spend money, that's necessarily going to expose all of my values. If I were to look at how you spend money, if I were to come into your life and pull open a list of all of the financial transactions of your life over the last year, if every single one were carefully recorded with enough detail that I could know what the transaction was, I wouldn't actually need to meet you to be able to form a probably pretty accurate concept of who you are.

Because the way that we spend money will be a reflection of who we are as a person. Every transaction tells a story. So I know that some of you are annoyed when I talk about things like worldviews, and I get that. But in the way that I'm creating this show, I aspire to do a couple of things.

Anytime I think something is neutral, morally neutral or ideologically neutral or politically neutral, I try to present it in a way that demonstrates that. But if something isn't neutral, then I try to fairly present multiple sides of the issue. And I'm certainly imperfect at actually doing it, but I do my best to present content in a way that it is fair, the best that I'm able to do.

But the problem is that on many questions of money, there is no moral neutrality. Let's take a simple example from the political sphere. If we look at where a government spends the taxpayer's money, then we can get a clear idea of the moral constraints or moral objectives of that particular system of government.

Some governments focus on building up their military strength. Some governments focus on building schools. Some give a certain amount of money to foreign aid. Some give a lot more money to foreign aid. Some governments focus on socialized systems of support for their citizens. All of these expenditures and budget items are driven by a system of morality.

It's inescapable, and it's the same in all of our lives. Most of the dollars that we spend are going to be driven by our own system of values. And when you do a proper job with financial planning, you will fully integrate all of your values with all of your individual transaction decisions.

We're whole people. We're not disconnected people. So I'm not going to lecture on a single thing to you today. Rather, I'm just going to simply share my thoughts on what I would do. And I'm not lecturing you on it, but I will do my best to kind of share with you why I think the way that I do.

And I'm going to do so in answering three questions, three major sections. I'm going to give you my thoughts on lotteries and why I actually hate them the way that they're currently structured. Then what would I buy or what would I do if I won the lottery, and how would I actually invest the money?

So the first part is going to be, again, specific to lotteries. I'm going to spend a little bit of time just simply sharing with you some of the underpinnings of my worldview and my personal experience, because money touches at the core of my entire understanding of life and it's been a major influence in my life.

You don't get to the point where you work as a financial advisor and do a show talking about money every day if it's not something that's important to you. And then I'll go into some very specific discussion of what I would buy and how I would invest. But let's start with lotteries.

I think this is a great question to think about. Super fun. And I've done this mental exercise many times and I had a lot of fun doing it again, just even in considering Micah's question. Just for fun, I put a $10 million number on the windfall to be able to answer.

Obviously, winning a lottery could be winning $1,000 in some scratch-off game or it could be $200 million in a lotto grand prize Powerball payout. I didn't choose those numbers because $1,000 would be relatively non-impactful to my financial life. I mean, I'll cash the check if you send it to me but it's not going to substantially affect my goals or probably even yours.

But on the other hand, $200 million would be utterly overwhelming to me to think about. It would completely shut down as the computer when you throw too much stuff at a computer system and it shuts down. It would be utterly overwhelming. I cannot even conceive of what I would do in that situation except sit down and cry at the enormous burden and responsibility of all that money.

I'm not at the place in my own personal experience where I can even – other than in an intellectual sense on some technical financial planning topic where I don't have to deal with the emotion of it. I can't conceive of those numbers. But I think I can handle $10 million as far as a mindset.

My experience in my own personal life makes that a number that I could actually feel and understand. So I've pegged this at $10 million. To make it easier on myself, I actually have mentally changed it from winning a lottery to having a rich aunt or uncle die unexpectedly and leave me the money.

Lotteries cause me personal problems and it's not just because of the math involved of the very low likelihood of winning the jackpot. But it's primarily because of the element of chance and the way that the system is structured at least in the United States of America. I think I've actually bought at least two lottery tickets in my lifetime, maybe three or four.

But I specifically remember two. One was when I was 18 or 19 years old and I had never played the lottery and I said, "This will be fun. I'm trying to rebel against what I've been taught." And so I went and bought some scratch off tickets and I scratched them off anxiously in the parking lot and felt like a total idiot because I'd wasted my money and I didn't win a thing.

Another time I remember specifically I was out with some family members who were visiting from out of town to dinner and the jackpot was over $200 million. So they swung by Publix to grab some tickets just for fun. I bet many of you would do the same thing just for fun.

You're not a habitual player but when the numbers get massive, you grab a ticket or two. So I tossed in my $3 and got a ticket. Then I felt like a total idiot when I went and checked the numbers and didn't win. I don't like wasting money. But on the flip side, I've actually made a lot of money on the lottery because the Florida lottery gave me a lot of money toward my college tuition through the Bright Future Scholarship is what it's called in our state.

So I've come out way ahead. They have a system in the Florida lottery where if you have sufficient academic standing, you can have 100% of your tuition to a state-run school paid for specifically and I had that highest level. Now I went to a private school with a much higher tuition so it didn't cover 100% of my tuition but it was the equivalent of the state system.

The problem is I'm absolutely opposed to lotteries the way that they're currently structured because of the political maneuvering. I have a series of arguments lined up that I'm going to share with you and you feel free to disagree with any of these arguments. They don't build on each other.

They're all separate distinct arguments. But the first one is I don't like the government monopoly on lotteries that we have in the United States of America. I'm going to read to you a couple of articles on – some excerpts from some articles on the history of lotteries. But it's a fascinating history when you actually get into it, at least in the United States.

The history of gambling in general is long and interesting but the history of lotteries specific is very interesting. There's a very long thread of tension between the need for certain people to raise money which is what lotteries are effective at and the moral opposition to them. This tension has been around for a very long time.

They've gone in and out of favor over the centuries. In the beginning of the United States, at least the founding of the nation, lotteries were quite popular. Over time during the 1800s, there was a substantial uprising of social religious pressure that ultimately led to the outlaw of the lotteries.

Reading from an article on the Priceonomics blog going over – which goes over the history of this, "In 1878, Louisiana ran the only legal lottery in the US. In the 1890s, national legislation prevented lotteries that crossed state borders and 35 states constitutionally banned lotteries. Legal lotteries took place only intermittently, although illegal ones still enjoyed popularity, until the Great Depression and World War II when the need for cash and stimulus overcame the reduced opposition to gambling and lotteries.

In 1964, a referendum by New Hampshire voters legalized the lottery to close a state budget gap and to fund the school system. A majority of states eventually followed New Hampshire's example. It's a testament to the endurance of the opposition to gambling that no privately run lotteries exist." Now, the major problem with the system of lotteries is that in order to get past the overall social opposition to gambling, there needs to be some sweeter incentive, something to sweeten up the pot.

So there needs to be something positive associated with it to make up for the moral evil and the negative impact on society that comes with gambling. "Politicians, voters and other actors have legitimized lotteries by linking them to activities of apple pie wholesomeness, funding education budgets, building libraries. One law during the Depression selectively allowed bingo at churches as donations to churches dried up." So you might ask the question, why is the state involved at all in a system of lotteries?

And here I'm going to read an excerpt from an article from the Daily Beast by a professor of law at Yale University named Stephen Carter. "I'm not at the moment challenging the morality of gambling generally. Rather, I am fascinated by how different lotteries are from other functions that we generally agree the state should undertake.

So for example, the state must famously provide for the common defense and protect the common environment. Because if those services were provided privately, there would be no way to keep those who did not pay their share from reaping the benefits. A government might provide a charitable service, food stamps for example, as a way of guaranteeing everyone a particular level of life's necessities.

In other fields such as health insurance, those who believe that the government should provide it believe that the state will do a better job than private insurers. And whether they are right or wrong, they are at least offering an argument for not leaving the matter to the market. But with lotteries, as with other forms of gambling, no such argument exists.

There is absolutely no reason to believe that the state can provide gambling services better than the private sector does. This is not a situation in which the government will return more value to consumers than the private market will, a claim often made for example by critics of for-profit health insurers.

As a matter of fact, state-run lotteries return around 50% of revenues to winners. In other words, the expected value from a $1 bet is 50 cents. No casino could stay in business offering odds this poor, but the government manages it by prohibiting competition. Indeed, as William Norman Thompson points out in his History of Gambling, in the states where other forms of gambling are legal, the bettor's expected return is significantly higher than in the lottery, even when you factor taxes on the winnings.

Most states do not tax winnings from their own lotteries. The federal government, of course, taxes it all. Overall, privately run gambling operations return something like 80% of bets in winning. In other words, from the point of view of the consumer, a state-run lottery is far worse than a private operation.

There is absolutely no reason to believe that the state can provide gambling services better than the private sector does. There are other fields one might argue that the state should exit because the private sector could handle them better. For example, in the wake of stories about air traffic controllers falling asleep on the job, an increasing number of critics have suggested that the federal government runs the system quite badly, especially in comparison with the private companies that police the skies in so much of the West, notably Canada.

But gambling is different. At least in the case of air traffic control, there are historical reasons to explain why we still have the cumbersome official bureaucracy in charge. In the case of gambling, the reason is a policy choice, and a simple one, raising revenue. Make no mistake, the state is here using its monopoly power to control businesses that others would happily provide.

The success of Las Vegas and of the very online poker sites the government is busily shutting down are the evidence. Most states prohibit the running of any "game of chance" for profit. These restrictions flowed originally from a concern about moral degeneracy, the fear that gambling could easily become all-consuming and destructive.

Another concern was that con artists would find ways to fleece the unsuspecting by concealing the true odds of winning. Evidently, those concerns are unimportant once the profits begin flowing into government coffers. And make no mistake, profit is what the state is after. In his textbook Public Finance, a Contemporary Application of Theory to Policy, economist David N.

Hyman puts it this way, "Lotteries are profit-making enterprises that most states run like any business, with heavy advertising and innovation in products that generate sales." The earliest American efforts at raising funds through lotteries failed largely because the public stayed away, often out of a sense of repugnance. The states that run lotteries today have learned the lesson, wearing away moral objections through a combination of heavy advertising and the trumpeting of huge jackpots by the complacent media.

And if we really no longer believe that games of chance are immoral, there is no reason not to let the private sector run them, at better odds for the better. Now, it is true that we live in an era when the states need revenue desperately, but are lotteries really the best way to raise them?

The regressive effects of the lottery has been documented so often that the argument has become ubiquitous, simply part of the background. Poor consumers spend a far higher proportion of their income on lottery tickets than wealthy consumers do. In other words, the states are raising revenue by tempting the worst off of their citizens to hand over their scarce dollars, playing a game with a ridiculously low return.

That's the end of Carter's essay. Now, I'm not exactly sure of my own opinion on whether or not lotteries should be freely permitted to exist. I think one of two things. Either lotteries should be freely permitted to exist on a private basis, free and open to competition by anyone who wants to get involved, or they should be banned entirely, for everybody, based upon the moral objection and the impact on society.

In general, I'm mostly inclined to the first opinion, to let them exist regardless. This is due to my strong libertarian bent, which is simply live and let live. You make up your own decisions. But I've been reconsidering my positions for the last six months to a year on the topic of legislating moral behavior and trying to figure out what makes sense because the reality is we do in fact legislate morality across the board.

The majority of arguments regarding legislation are based on moral grounds, but the question is whose moral grounds and why? So I've been doing my best to, in my spare time, kind of systematically rethink my perceptions on that issue for quite a while. I'm not sure where I stand at this point.

I have an unsettled feeling at the moment. Again, I've been thinking a lot about it, searching for the right perspective, and I'm not sure exactly what to conclude. But regardless, I don't think we should be running the system the way that we currently run it. Again, I could probably be argued in both of those directions.

But to say that something is morally evil and its impact is negative on society and thus we're going to restrict it for everybody except the state to run and then in order for the state to run it effectively, we're going to sweeten the market by figuring out what are some good wholesome things to send the money to that are politically popular, that's not a good plan.

I don't think that politicians should be buying their access to the market through a state-run monopoly and then just simply sending the money to education. That's how it works in my state and in most of the 50 United States. Basically, we know that lotteries lead to moral decline and generally oppress the poor.

So in order to make them palatable to the general public, we take some money out and send it to education. So here's the impact and here's my summary of how it winds up working in the long run. Again, feel free to disagree with me and form your own opinion.

It's just mine. But lotteries are actually about the worst of the worst of the worst in terms of things that are wrong in our current society. Overwhelmingly, it's poor people who play lotteries at the highest levels. So lotteries effectively wind up being a tax on poor people. That tax is contrary to what is stated as being our overall policy of taxation in the United States.

Supposedly, we believe as a nation in the concept of progressive taxation that the rich should pay more, a higher percentage of their income, than the poor. This tax is the opposite. It's regressive and the poor pay way more as a percentage of their income than the rich. Now, I'm not in favor of progressive or regressive taxation.

I'm in favor of flat taxation. But I'm just pointing out this is the actual effect of the lottery. So we know this about lotteries and we feel pretty scummy about them. So we try to offset those feelings of guilt with a slick sales job using the topic of funding education.

Most states have applied some or all of their profits from running a lottery to the state's educational programs in order to get it past the voters and in order to gain popular support. Basically, we say, "Well, we don't really like the lotteries. But as long as we can benefit society by funding education instead of just enriching the corporation in charge, we'll take it." And in theory, public schools and the concept of public education is sold as benefiting society with a special emphasis on benefiting the poor.

Theoretically, it's a social public good. This fits into our US-American ethos of egalitarianism and equal access for all. After all, we know, well, the rich would send their kids to school but the poor would--they would all be uneducated misfits. So we're going to apply equal education for all. So we say that, "Well, we'll offset the oppression of the poor by offering funding for public schools and scholarships for college," and that's the sales pitch.

So what's the problem? Well, number one, in my opinion, the primary function of public schooling in the United States is not the education and equipping of the individual person but rather the homogenization of society for easier governing and control and the babysitting of kids so that both parents can be involved in the labor force, thus keeping per capita labor costs low.

Feel free to disagree with that. That's one of the less popular opinions that I have. So feel free to disagree but at least research the question a little bit and see if you can find any evidence in favor of that thesis. I find the historical evidence compelling and as I watch society at large, I find the current evidence compelling.

But you have to judge for yourself. But that press to keep per capita labor costs low results in real damage to the poor. It really does. Now, ignore that argument because that one, again, is one of my wilder ones. Even if the purpose of school is all about the education and equipping of the individual, at least consider this, the results of academic achievement in literacy and numeracy in the United States are quite bad compared to what they could be.

Many people seem to agree on that and different people suggest different solutions to that problem. Most of the solutions involve spending more money. The problem for me is I've never found any compelling evidence that spending more money solves the problem and improves the results. The only evidence I've seen of what makes the difference seems to be primarily parental involvement and maybe the impact of PE classes and physical movement during school.

Now, if you have evidence in favor of anything else, I'd love to see it. I've never found it. Some of the most expensive public school districts in the country have the worst performance as measured by test scores. When you compare the fact that the average public school district in the United States of America spends $10,000 per year per child, that's the average, almost double that in some states, and gets, depending on the district, academic results that are mediocre to bad, and the average homeschool family spends $500 per year per student, and these students outperform the public school kids on every academic metric I've ever read about, we know the primary problem isn't lack of money.

Now, that disparity in cost doesn't include the cost of the parent's time in home education in the $500 number, but it does include the cost of the teacher's time in the $10,000 number. So that is a flaw in that argument. But in 2015, in a world where once we get a child past those first few years of handholding to the point where they can use a computer effectively, then we can have essentially one world-class teacher teach a subject to millions of kids through a virtual connection.

We can certainly at least improve the system a little bit, even if we had to redesign the system of teachers. At least, if nothing else, find out who the best math teacher is in the United States, give them an internet connection – it's already been done, it's free, it's called the Khan Academy – give them an internet connection, let them teach one lesson, and then take half the teachers and double the – turn them all into tutors so they have time just to tutor kids instead of teaching kids.

Anyway, that's tough. But my point is more money simply does not equal a better education. So why doesn't – why don't simple changes get done? Well, politics and votes. Until the change is forced by the free market conditions, it's not going to get changed. Now, that change is coming.

It's been building and building and building, and it's going to change massively in the next decade or two. Remember, in any compounding curve, at the beginning, the compounding effect that is measured and felt is tiny, and it's massive as it grows. Now the other problem with this line of thinking is remember that the academic metrics are actually horrible predictors of life success in almost every single way.

They simply do not translate to real world results in any measurable way that I've ever been able to find evidence for. GPAs and test scores primarily predict the students who do well in the formal academic structure. Students with great GPAs and great test scores in high school are likely to do well in college, and those who have great GPAs and great test scores in college, undergraduate college, are likely to do well in graduate school.

But once you get out of the academic environment, you don't find a reliable causal relationship between GPAs and test scores and financial income or life success. Test scores essentially predict excellent students. They don't necessarily predict successful people or even rich people. So even if we pour loads of money in, that doesn't necessarily impact the lifelong success of the student.

Now next argument. Assume all of what I just said is wrong. Even if the purpose of public schools is the education and equipping of the student individually, and even if the current structure is the best way to achieve that purpose. The problem is the people who are most ill served by the current structure and the current system are the poor, and the people who are the most benefited by the current system are the mass affluent.

And research the numbers here. The high school dropout rates for poor students are extremely high. The poorest 20% of students as measured by household income are five times more likely than the richest 20% of students to drop out of high school. Why? Well, usually there are three major reasons that are cited that are the primary contributing factors as to why students drop out of high school.

Number one, lack of parent engagement. Number two, poor academic performance of the student. And number three, the family income needs. Now all of these statistics can be beat. It's been proven again and again that on an individual basis, they can be changed. When a teacher takes an interest in a child and really encourages them and inspires them and holds them accountable, those factors and those trends can be beat.

But in general, students from poor families get worse results from the government school system than students of the mass affluent. Now who gets the benefits? What do many wise affluent parents do? Well, they carefully research school districts and they take advantage of the subsidized cost of schooling for their family's own economic benefit.

Read Tom Stanley's research on the habits and practice of millionaires and you find this as a consistent theme throughout. Millionaires often search carefully and choose their homes carefully to be in an excellent school district so they don't have to pay for private school tuition. Now many affluent families still pay for private school tuition.

If you're working in the glittering rich, you're very likely to be sending your child through the elite system of boarding schools or something like that. There's a big difference there, but I'm talking about the mass affluent. So what's the impact on students? Well, richer families are more likely to have engaged parents.

Makes a big difference in their child's encouragement to finish schooling. Richer families are more likely to hold their students accountable for their academic performance. So the student has an incentive to increase their academic performance because among the rich, education is one of the most highly valued, one of the highest values.

And richer families are less likely to have problems with their family income. Their family income needs are satisfied. So the students can afford to make the time to study and can afford to be focused exclusively or primarily on their academic achievement. So what we have is a system where the poor are playing the lottery, paying for the funding of schools and not benefiting from it on the back end.

Now everything I just said is about primary and secondary schooling, but depending on the state's lottery system, some of that money goes into college education as well. And many of those things apply to college as well. Poor students are less likely to go to college and less likely to graduate from college and thus they're less likely to benefit from the lottery college education funding than are rich students.

I got a lot of money from the Bright Futures program in my state, which is a lottery program. As I recall, probably something in total of $15,000 to $20,000 over the four years of college tuition. That direct subsidy went into my pocket. Now my parents didn't contribute financially to my college education, so I was a pretty poor student all the way through.

But I didn't necessarily qualify as a poor student the way that these things are measured. The problem is that college subsidy is in addition to all of the other money we spend on public colleges and universities, much of which is very bloated and wasted. And if it's not bloated and wasted, it's certainly at least out of date, where in, again, 2015, one professor can teach millions of people efficiently and many professors then could go on and provide the individual interaction in other ways.

Now, one more very quick libertarian argument and then an argument that you'll agree with me regardless of your – probably regardless of your political background on the far spectrum from where I am. But the quick libertarian argument is this. Even if the purpose of public schools is the education and equipping of the student and even if the current structure is the best way to achieve that purpose and even if all students from all economic backgrounds were well-served by the school system, I think it's still a problem because it's a system that relies on theft to fund it.

My children and their education is my responsibility, not yours. So basically what happens is we live in a system where I send the police to my neighbor's door who don't – they don't have any kids and the police stand there with a gun on their hip to enforce the tax that's extracted from my neighbor to pay for my kid's schooling.

So I'm forcing my neighbor who doesn't have children to pay for their kid's schooling. As far as I'm concerned, that's theft. Now, why doesn't it change? Well, we've decided as a society collectively, theoretically, that it's a social good and my neighbor is benefited by my children not being total misfits and we think that's the best system that we have.

But taking money from the poor with a lottery system and putting it into a system that's based upon theft is not a good system in my opinion. Theft from the rich is just as evil as theft from the poor regardless of what Robin Hood had to say about it.

Now, the argument that – feel free to disagree with that one. That one is a very unusual and unpopular opinion in our modern society. But here is one that I think you will likely agree with. So let me disagree with every one of my other arguments and you're very much in favor of promoting and sponsoring state-funded schooling.

Well, what's the problem with the lottery? Costs are rising for many reasons, some structural, some non-structural. The government school system is a total disaster because the embedded structural costs are long-ranging and massive. But popular support goes down. People have a desire to see on a social basis education raised which is why the majority of politicians will say, "We've got to fund education.

We've got to fund education." It's the last – it's the only state religion that we have in the United States of America is the concept of education. It's almost sacrosanct. It can't be touched. But the problem is the embedded costs continue to rise. Even though people give – and general – lip service to the idea, we all pretty much feel like we're being about taxed enough.

So in an era of rising costs, the money has to come from somewhere. Because the politicians are loath to raise taxes in some states, what's happening is some states are steadily taking the lottery funds and replacing existing tax-based funds for education with those lottery funds. So instead of lottery money being additional funding, it's replacement funding.

The money is not extra money. It's replacement money. That's a real problem. What happens is instead of coming together as a society collectively, forming the structure of a state and saying officially, "We officially want to have common schooling for all of our citizens so that the society in general is enhanced and we are all willing to pay for it, even those of us who don't have kids and who don't realize the direct benefit from this, and then we officially follow through to pay for it to realize our gains," what we actually do is we take the money from poor people with an indirect tax and replace the other directly taxed money with the indirectly taxed money so that we can spend the other directly taxed money on other stuff.

It's a bait and switch. Which benefits who? The politicians in charge. It's a corrupt system. It's a corrupt system that is pervasive across our society. We promise benefits now without actually paying for them so that we can get the political popularity of the benefits while avoiding the political unpopularity of having to pay for them.

We can argue about what we should or should not collectively do as a society, but if we argue and decide among ourselves collectively that we're going to provide a certain benefit, it's only right that it be paid for. For all those reasons, I have major issues with lotteries and the focus on education.

I hope you'll think through some of those discussions and consider your own perspective. There's no broad-ranging political upswell of support to make any changes for lotteries, and I don't really expect there to be. This is a very quiet issue, which I never hear anybody talk about, but this is what's happening quietly in the background.

So just consider it. Now my final argument on lotteries is very brief, but it's also very important. Ignore all the arguments related to education and just focus on this one. Winning the lottery is for the most part very bad for many winners. It has major ill effects in many of their lives and it's often a curse.

Now it's not always. We love the stories of the people who are benefited from it, and many people are able to take the money and put it to excellent use. But in many people, it's a curse. I tried to research the statistics on this question, but they were too inconclusive officially for me to be comfortable citing any of them.

There's a lot of misinformation on the topic. But it seems to me that at least more often than not, so I guess that would put it at a higher than 50% number, but I'll just say more often than not because I don't know the exact number. The effect on the lottery winner's life is negative because more often than not, the buyers of lottery tickets are poor and undisciplined with money already.

Now again, many people play the lottery who are not poor, maybe even some of you who are listening. For some people, it's fun and it's not a substantial part of their income, and thus it has few ill effects. But a disproportionately high number of people who are poor play consistently.

And here I'll cite a quote from a Wired article. "While approximately half of Americans buy at least one lottery ticket at some point, the vast majority of tickets are purchased by about 20% of the population." I'm interrupting the quote. That's about what you would expect, Pareto principle at work.

These high frequency players tend to be poor and uneducated, which is why critics refer to lotteries as a regressive tax. In a 2006 survey, 30% of people without a high school degree said that playing the lottery was a wealth building strategy. On average, households that make less than $12,400 a year spend 5% of their income on lotteries, a source of hope for just a few bucks a throw.

Think about that number. On average, households that make less than $12,400 a year spend 5% of their income on lotteries. Now, if you make less than $12,000, if you make $12,400 a year and you spend 5% of your income on a lottery, that comes out to be $620 per year.

If you are making that tiny amount of money per year, $620 is a huge amount of money for you to be wasting. If you've listened to this show for any length of time, you should start to recognize that you have to behave very differently depending on where you are in your financial journey.

The person earning $12,400 a year must take advantage of every single dollar and squeeze every bit of value out of it. And $620 per year is the price that you need to be investing into furthering your education, into investing in your own business, into any number of things that are better than a lottery.

If you're making $100,000 a year and just for fun when you're filling up your car with gas, you buy a couple of lottery tickets, it doesn't really matter. But that's not what happens. And that is a horrifyingly high number of dollars to be spending on an absolute waste, $620 per year.

That's $51.67 per month in a budget with zero wiggle room. So when somebody's making decisions that poor and then they come into a lot of money all of a sudden, it quickly destroys their lives. And you have incredibly high incidence of divorce, depression, suicide, bankruptcy, etc. If people who already have a framework for wealth come into sudden money, then it just simply flows into their lives without a major disruption.

It goes to the next goal on the list. And so therefore, again, some people do win the lottery who are already effective with money just because they play for fun. It's something that they enjoy in the same way that you might go on a cruise and decide to blow a thousand bucks on the blackjack tables.

I wouldn't do it but it doesn't necessarily mean that you are I think financially responsible. I've blown my $50 a couple of times on a blackjack table. The point is the scale matters. Just consider those things in your normal life. And again, I don't have any action steps with it but I do think those are at least compelling reasons.

For all those reasons, I'm choosing to answer this question from the perspective of an unexpected rich relative dying and leaving me an unexpected inheritance rather than based on a lottery winning. Since I don't play the lottery, it's a little bit easier for me to consider that actually happening. So what would I actually do?

What would I buy? What would I do with the money? How would I invest it? Well, again, we're going to be talking about something that's based upon values. It's a very personal question. In order for you to understand my answer to the question, you would need to understand a little bit about the framework of my worldview and especially a little bit of my personal history as it relates to money.

And I'm going to share with you four important concepts behind my personal worldview and how I think about handling money that flows into my life. And those four concepts are number one, accountability. Am I accountable for how I spend money and if so, to whom? Number two, sovereignty. Who's in charge of how I spend my money?

Number three, a concept of stewardship. And number four, a concept of faithfulness. And those last two are two concepts that are primarily specific to Christianity. And if you've gotten with me to this point in the show, thank you. I'm going to spend a little bit of time talking about Christianity and biblical teaching on money.

If you're accustomed to tuning out religious discussions, feel free to skip it. I'll put a note in the show notes where I actually get to what I would invest in. But I will ask you to give this a shot, and especially if you are a secular person. And so as a bait for you, I'll give you a few tidbits in these next few ideas that you can use to catch out some of your Bible-thumping friends on some of their favorite Bible verses.

And if you like to challenge people on their beliefs, as I do, and if you enjoy being challenged yourself, as I do, you might enjoy this. I hold to a biblical Christian worldview. And I'll define that a little bit for you, because every worldview has nuances. It's just because you give something a name doesn't necessarily mean you actually know what it is.

But the impact of my life of this worldview on money is hard to overstate. One of the major reasons that I didn't become a Christian at an earlier age is that I didn't want somebody else to tell me what to do with my money. Because I was raised in an environment of family filled with Christians and an environment filled with Christians, I knew that was a major component of Christianity.

And I never wanted someone to tell me what to do with my money. I wanted to be rich. I wanted a fancy lifestyle. I hated the idea, what I associated with Christianity, of being sent off into lifelong poverty, never able to spend money, never able to have fun, just never being able to do that.

But I often wondered if what Christians said was true was actually true. Did people really change? Now, my own path into a relationship with God was a bit different, I think, than many people. It started to some degree intellectually. I started from the philosophical perspective of thinking, "Is there a God?" And that's why you'll notice the flavor of when I talk about this stuff, it's driven philosophically.

That was because that was a meaningful way for me. So for me, it started intellectually. And then later I saw my own sinfulness. I didn't see the whole at the beginning. I only saw part of it. My major personal struggles with sin were sexual sin and pride. And I repented of those sins, but I didn't clearly see how much my love of money had affected my life or really even know how to repent of it at the beginning.

And I was very grudging and very slow with regard to thinking about what to do with money. In other areas, I was much more willing to follow God's teachings, but not with money. I knew that if I were to become a Christian, this is what kept me away for so long, I was surrendering absolute control of my life.

And that's a tough, tough decision to make, especially when you're young and capable and strong and self-sufficient, and especially when you love money. There's actually a Bible story about that. I won't go into that one. But I didn't know what to do with that. I knew that I had to surrender, so I very grudgingly surrendered, but it wasn't clear for me how to repent of that because it was pretty deep.

Now, if I'd stolen money, it would have been simpler. Repentance would have meant confessing the sin and going back and making restitution to everyone from whom I'd stolen money. But how do you repent of a love of money? How do you make that right? I didn't really know what to do about it.

And so I just simply had to kind of set those topics aside for a little while. But one of the things that I discovered in the last 10 years of my own personal relationship since I was born again was a dramatic change in my heart. I discovered that what Christians said was true was true, and that God really could change people.

I didn't make these changes intentionally. I couldn't. I didn't have any ability to control personally my love of money, but little by little, these things changed. So what I'm going to share with you is a very hard fought struggle and journey in my life to this position. That's simply a way of saying, feel free to disagree with me because I understand the disagreement because I would have hated hearing these ideas in the past.

I did hate that. But things have changed. And I am still very imperfect with knowing exactly what to do and seeing all the ways that it learns and works out. I'm learning and I'm growing, but I'm sure there are areas of fault and failure and there might even be some hypocrisy in some area of my life.

I don't see it right now, but I might be blind to it. And I'm quite certain that some of the things that I currently think and believe are probably wrong. I joke with my wife that 50% of what I currently believe is wrong. The problem is I don't know which 50% it is.

So thus we have one of the major joys of life to sort through our thinking and study and learn and grow. So one of the fundamental distinctions regarding life and money and different worldviews is the concept of accountability, accountability in general and accountability with regard to what we do with our money.

If you won $10 million from a rich uncle or rich aunt, to whom are you accountable? Are you even accountable at all? Are you accountable to that uncle or aunt to use the money in a way that they would wish? If so, why? Or if not, why not? Are you accountable to society in general to use the money for some social purpose, social good?

If so, why? If not, why not? Are you accountable to the state government to pay their share of tax on the money? If so, why? If not, why not? What if you inherited the money in secret? What if it's untraceable gold coins that are passed to you and handed to you?

Are you still accountable to pay your share of the tax? Are you accountable to your spouse to share the money with them collectively? If so, why? And if not, why not? Are you accountable to your family to help your family members? Are you accountable to yourself? Are you accountable to God?

Are we accountable for the things that we do, and if so, to whom? If you think about that question, you come up with many different answers. In the Christian worldview, you're accountable to God to use the money in the way that he would instruct. In a secular worldview, you're accountable primarily to yourself to make yourself happy.

And secondarily, you might be accountable to society depending on which philosophical stream you are comfortable with. There's a vague secondary accountability to society in general. We all live within an environment of accountability, but we rarely consider the basis for it. So consider it. To whom are we accountable and why?

To whom are you accountable in your job? To whom is the CEO of your company accountable to? To whom are the governing bodies accountable to? Where does our authority come from and why? I believe the answer to that question starts and flows out of Genesis 1, verses 1, which says, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." Now, I don't know if that's the most important statement in the Bible, but if it isn't, I don't know which statement would be more important because everything flows from that.

And that's the reason why there's such a battle in our common cultures over the origin of man. God is creator or man is evolved accident, happenstance, because everything hinges on that question. If you remove the first few chapters from the Bible, the entire thing is incoherent and it falls completely apart.

So I'm fascinated by that topic and I frankly think that each and every person should be fascinated by it because it fundamentally affects all of our life. And I'm not going to go too deeply into the discussion because if I do, I'll misrepresent the focus of the podcast. This show is not a bait and switch where I bait you in to talk about money, then switch it out and preach at you.

But the show is also not a lie where I tell you that you can teach certain things about finance without being affected by worldview. So when I think about accountability, I think about accountability for life. That's even why I talk about – it's not a bait and switch. I'm accountable to you, the listening audience, to tell you what I'm going to do and then do it.

I have a list of 16 statements that are very short, but to me they underpin this concept of accountability for life in general. But they also underpin an accountability for what we do with money. These things create a particularly thorny thing – thorny impact for people like me who are talking about money.

But I think in terms of contrast, so consider these 16 statements and think about how they might apply to the question of accountability of life in general and to whom we're accountable for how we use money. Feel free to pick either side or anywhere in between. Number one, if you believe in biblical creation, the idea that God created the heavens and the earth, then you believe in a father God who is personal.

If you believe in secular evolution, then you tend towards the concept of mother nature, which is a mythical cultural construct, a concept. If you believe in biblical creation, then you believe that this universe was the result of a personal choice. If you believe in secular evolution, then you argue that it was a random impersonal chance that has a profound impact on money.

If you believe in biblical creation, then you believe there was a designed purpose for life. Under secular evolution, there's a random pattern. If you believe in biblical creation, the universe is a supernatural production. In evolution, it's a natural process. If you believe in biblical creation, the whole universe is an open situation, open to personal intervention by both God and man.

In evolution, we have nature as a closed system that operates itself. If you believe in biblical creation, we have the concept of providence, that God cares for his creation and provides for it and looks after it. With evolution, we have coincidence. If anything good happens, it is merely the result of chance.

If you believe in biblical creation, then we accept that God is free to make something and to make man in his image. If we accept evolution, we're left with a view that man is free to make God in whatever image he chooses out of his imagination. If you believe in biblical creation, God is Lord.

Under evolution, man is Lord. If you believe in biblical creation, we are under divine authority. But if there is no God, we are autonomous as humans and can decide things for ourselves. If we accept God as creator, we accept that there are absolute standards of right and wrong. But with secular evolution, we have relative situations.

With God's creation, we talk of duty and responsibility. With evolution, we talk of demands and rights. Under God, we have an infinite dependence. We become his little children in biblical words and speak to the heavenly Father. With evolution, we are proud of our independence and we speak of coming of age and of no longer needing God.

According to the Bible, man is a fallen creature. According to evolution, man is rising and progressing all the time. In the Bible, we have salvation for the weak. In evolutionary philosophy, we have the survival of the strong. The Bible teaches that you are powerful when you do what is right.

Evolutionary philosophy leads to a might is right outlook. And here's the key. The Bible says that faith, hope, and love are the three main virtues in life. Secular evolution says that you should indulge yourself and look after number one. Now, if you think through that list or if you can bear to listen through it again, each of those I've specifically chosen because it has an impact on money.

The challenge is that either of those positions requires faith. It's kind of interesting. The Bible never proves God's existence. It assumes it. And secular humanists can't disprove God. They assume non-existence. So either way, you're left with faith. And I love to study what Christians call apologetics. And I love to have personal conversations with people about the subject.

I love the intellectual arguments for and against the existence of God. But the problem is that this is the wrong format for that. But either way, you make an assumption and then you build on that assumption. The Bible itself says in the book of Hebrews says, "Whoever comes to God must first believe that he exists and that he rewards those who diligently search for him." And I found that to be true.

Now, the major impact of these perspectives is the concept of accountability. And so for me, I believe that I'm accountable to God for everything I do, for all of my actions, for everything in my life. I'm accountable to please God in all things. And that includes how I use the money that I control.

I'll use the term "his money," which I'll come to in a moment. If I were a secular humanist, then I would believe that I'm accountable to myself and to please myself. As a Christian, I'm commanded to live with the focus on the next life, not this life. If I were a secular humanist, I would live with the focus on this life, not the next life.

As a Christian, I'm commanded to live with the focus on doing what is right. As a humanist, I would live with the focus of gratifying my desires and attaining personal happiness. So for me, if I won $10 million in a lottery, I'm accountable to God for how I handle the money.

Now, I'm also accountable for how I handle every dollar that flows through my hands today. So then the natural next question would be, "Okay, if I'm accountable for something, then what's the basis upon which I'm held accountable? What's the standard by which I'm going to be judged? What am I being held accountable to?" And that's why we need some sort of instruction.

I take that instruction from the Bible. Now, interestingly, the Bible has a lot to say about money. Here's a statistic that will surprise many people. It certainly surprised me when I first learned it years ago. I think it was from a Crown Financial textbook. There are approximately 500 verses in the Bible on prayer.

There are fewer than 500 verses in the Bible on faith, but there are more than 2,350 verses on how to handle money. The Bible has a lot to say about money and it will impact every part of a Christian's life. I'm not going to take the time to go into a defense of why I give the Bible any authority.

It's an important discussion, but I'll leave that up to you to research and consider it. I've talked about it in previous shows. But don't assume it. It's an incredibly important question. But for me, I use the Bible as the basis of this worldview, and I believe that it contains the revealed words of God and is absolutely relevant to our modern situation, especially to what I should do with money each and every single day.

Even though much of it is over 2,000 years old, some of it 4,000 years old, that statement is utterly maddening to many people for many reasons. Because if I were to make that claim about almost any other book or any other subject, I'd be laughed out of just about any conversation.

Imagine for a moment my making a claim that a 2,000-year-old math book is perfectly relevant and adequate for today's world, or that a 2,000-year-old physics textbook is the latest and greatest, how absurd that claim would be. And yet, that's what the Bible claims for itself, and ultimately, I believe it proves it.

Now, if I assume the authority of Scripture and I wish to apply what it says to do about money, does that make it easy to know what to do in every situation? Not the least little bit. Because first, much of it was written thousands of years ago. They didn't have IRAs 3,000 years ago.

But more importantly, you've got to build these things together in a coherent fashion. I'll link to a PDF outlining the verses in the Bible that discuss money if any of you are interested in actually looking at it. But please, don't just take a verse individually and try to build on it without understanding the overall framework for each statement and verse.

That ends in disaster. In the same way that perhaps an example would be that just because you have the U.S. Constitution written out doesn't mean that there's no question as to interpretation and application. In the same way, just because you have the Bible written out, even if you assume what I assume, which many people don't, it doesn't mean that you don't have to work out your interpretation of what it says.

And even if you believe, as I do, that the Bible is divinely inspired but the U.S. Constitution is not, then it still doesn't mean that just because it's divinely inspired that it's easy to figure out in certain circumstances. And there are many reasons for this, and I'll just share a few examples that might be interesting to you.

One of the biggest reasons is to recognize that the Bible is not really one book. In many ways, it's actually a library of books, all of which have their own impact and their own purpose. There are books of history, and this is what a lot of people, often who haven't dug into it a little bit, don't perceive.

There are books of history, there are books of stories, there are books of prophecy, there are books of law, books of poetry, books of proverbs, which are simply collections of wise sayings, books of instruction, personal letters, there's songbooks and hymnbooks, there's even blueprints with careful measurements and census reports of censuses of a population.

There are at least two books in the Bible that don't say a thing about God, not one word. There's an entire book in the Bible that's all about the young love of a man and a woman and their sexual relationship as young lovers. It's quite scandalous, actually, for young boys and girls who read through their Bibles.

I used to love reading through the scandalous parts of the Bible while sitting in church service as a boy. There's a verse in the Bible that's very explicit in its description of masturbation, and you can feel like quite the naughty little boy sitting in church, in a church meeting, reading about that.

Or quite explicit of discussions of just crazy stories. There's all kinds of crazy stories. There's a girl in the Bible named Jail who kills a guy named Sisera by driving a tent peg through his skull while he was sleeping. Sisera had been in a battle and they were being attacked and overrun, and he ran away on foot trying to find a place that he could hide, and he asked this girl to hide him in her tent, and he was exhausted from fighting all day.

He fell asleep and she came in with a hammer and a tent peg and pounded the tent peg through his skull. Crazy. There's a story of a guy named Ehud who is a left-handed military guy, and he straps a sword to his right leg, and he went in to see the king.

And so most people were right-handed, so they would usually just check the left leg for weapons to see if he had a hidden sword. So he straps his sword to his right leg, a short 18-inch sword, and he smuggles it into a private meeting with the king, and then in the middle of the meeting, pulls out a sword and plunges it into the king's belly.

And those are just two interesting stories that I love. I love that the Bible never shrinks back from accurately depicting accounts, and it always shows the whole person and exposes the good and the evil honestly and accurately, and it shows a person's strengths and weaknesses. And it's incredible when you get into it.

There's stories of mass killings and stories of rape and incest and seduction and betrayal and stories of heroism and villainy and justice and injustice and good and evil, and some parts are inspiring and uplifting and others are downright depressing. And when you think about why certain books were included that were included, then you have to ask why were others excluded that were excluded?

There are other ancient books of history that are true and accurate but aren't in there. I'll tempt you with that question and let you work on the answer. But you have to approach all these texts carefully, because they all have different reasons for being written and different reasons for being included.

I can't make a philosophy about killing people by driving tent pegs through their skull just because it's included in the Bible. So in the same way that there are various schools of thoughts of how to apply the content of the US Constitution written over 200 years ago to the common day in a very different world, there are schools of thought that range widely on how to apply thousands of year old documents to a modern world.

And you'll have to search it out. It's not an easy thing to do. It's – I'll give you just one example of the challenge of interpreting scripture. In my household, we have breakfast together every morning and after breakfast, we read from the Bible. And this morning, I was reading – we were reading the book of Luke and I read this passage and I think this is the first time I've ever read a Bible passage on the show, but I think it's appropriate here.

It's just a funny, fun little story and it's from a modern translation. And you ask yourself what this means. So here's the passage from the book of Luke. "Jesus told this story to his disciples. There was a certain rich man who had a manager handling his affairs. One day a report came that the manager was wasting his employer's money.

So the employer called him in and said, 'What's this I hear about you? Get your report in order because you are going to be fired.' The manager thought to himself, 'Now what? My boss has fired me. I don't have the strength to dig ditches and I'm too proud to beg.

Ah, I know how to ensure that I'll have plenty of friends who will give me a home when I'm fired.' So he invited each person who owed money to his employer to come and discuss the situation. He asked the first one, 'How much do you owe him?' The man replied, 'I owe him 800 gallons of olive oil.' So the manager told him, 'Take the bill and quickly change it to 400 gallons.' 'And how much do you owe my employer?' he asked the next man.

'I owe him a thousand bushels of wheat,' was the reply. 'Here,' the manager said, 'take the bill and change it to 800 bushels.' The rich man had to admire the dishonest rascal for being so shrewd. And it is true that the children of this world are more shrewd in dealing with the world around them than are the children of light.

Here's the lesson. Use your worldly resources to benefit others and make friends. Then, when your earthly possessions are gone, they will welcome you to an eternal home. If you are faithful in little things, you will be faithful in large ones. But if you are dishonest in little things, you won't be honest with greater responsibilities.

And if you are untrustworthy about worldly wealth, who will trust you with the true riches of heaven? And if you are not faithful with other people's things, why should you be trusted with things of your own? No one can serve two masters, for you will hate one and love the other.

You will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money." That's one of my favorite stories from the Bible, just 'cause I love the way that this particular translation puts it. The rich man had to admire the dishonest rascal for being so shrewd.

But the question is, okay, what do I do with that? What was Jesus trying to teach? And that's your homework, and my homework. Now my purpose here has been to establish the concept of accountability. I start from the perspective that I am accountable for how I live my life in every way, and I'm accountable for all of my actions, all of my words, how I spend my time, and how I spend my money.

I would point out to you that our society also, to some degree, holds people accountable for how we live our lives, how we spend our time, how we spend our money. And what we're held accountable to changes. The question is, on what basis do we hold one another accountable?

The next concept you need to understand is the question of sovereignty. The question of sovereignty is essentially, who's in charge here? And obviously there are various responses depending on worldview. I believe the correct one is that God is in charge. He is fully sovereign. He is in control and in charge.

Now, as I shared earlier, I hated that when I was younger. In fact, it was the number one thing that kept me from being a Christian for the first 20 years of my life. I wanted to be sovereign over my life. I didn't want to cede my sovereignty to another person.

I knew that was what God required, and I was always scared of what that might mean. I was scared of what God might make me do. After all, sin is fun, and I wanted to have my fun. Sin is a lot of fun for a time, and I did.

But ultimately though, I surrendered my sovereignty and my life changed dramatically. Now, if God is sovereign, then you have to ask the question which many people don't ask, "How do I reconcile the situation that I face in my life? To what extent is God sovereign? Do I sit back and pray, or do I get up and work, or do I do both of those things?" If God is sovereign and in control, then what do I do with the situation I'm in?

If I'm poor, why? If I'm rich, why? That's not strictly limited to money. The classic version of this question is something that keeps many, many people from a belief in God. The philosophers call it theodicy, or you could just simply refer to it as they call the problem of evil, which is in short, if there's a good God who's all powerful, why would he permit evil in the world?

That's a bedrock of many philosophical debates about the existence of God. And more importantly, it's a bedrock of many non-philosophers, normal peoples, their objection to God. If God's good, how could he allow my mother to die, or my Uncle Joe to get cancer, or me to get raped, or my child to be disabled, etc.

But the corollary is, "Wait a second, why would God allow us to be poor?" Or even stated differently, "Why would God make us poor?" Now, many people ask that question, but they don't ask the other question, "Why would God allow us to be rich, or make us rich?" That's an important question.

Again, I'll challenge you with it. The Bible teaches the sovereignty of God in my current circumstances. He's in control. The Bible does not teach deism. Deism is a belief that there is a God, or at least there was a God, who created the world, but that God does not intervene with the functioning of the natural world, but rather allows it to function according to the laws of nature.

Deism is extremely common in our world today, and in my opinion, it's probably the most common spiritual viewpoint, especially among success writers, success coaches, success personalities, people who talk about money. I often observe this in reading about money, in reading books, personal finance books. The writers will often offer a nod to the existence of God, or at least to some sort of non-material spiritual entity, but they pull back from discussing the actual involvement of God in our actual circumstances of life.

Why? Well, probably many reasons, but primarily it's super tough to talk about God's involvement without alienating a substantial portion of your audience. Obviously, there are many perspectives. There are many different human philosophies that will majorly affect your view of money, whether you're atheism, agnosticism, animism, polytheism, dualism, monotheism, deism, theism, existentialism, humanism, rationalism, materialism, mysticism, monism, pantheism, panantheism.

There's just a few, but each of those viewpoints will dramatically affect your viewpoint on life in general and on money in specific. But even if you were, let's say that you were going to come from the perspective of what I do as far as a Christian, and I believe the Bible teaches triune theism.

God is three in one and is creator and controller of the universe, which means God not only created the world but is also currently in control of everything. Different people will take that and they will start to apply different teachings from at the far end, come and give to God and God will make you rich, to at the other end, God says give everything away and be poor, give everything away.

So I don't fault most speakers and success gurus from shying away from the topic. I face this challenge each and every day and I often want to run from it. How on earth, I ask myself, how on earth do you speak to a general audience filled with people from many philosophical backgrounds and teach truth without causing intentional offense?

I'm not sure I do it well at all. I really don't think I do. I'm learning and I'm working at it. And more importantly, how do you integrate the idea of God being in control over my situation? My specific situation? And then figuring out what my proper response would be to that situation.

I won't try to answer that question for you. It's not an easy question in any way, shape, or form. If God is in control over my situation, my specific situation, then what is my proper response to the circumstances that I currently face? Now for me, the reason why that question of sovereignty is so important is this.

I don't believe in chance. The discussion of the idea of chance or luck is a real challenge for Christians, but for me I don't believe in chance or luck. And so if I inherited $10 million, or even if I won it in a lottery, I would have to believe that God is sovereign and there's a purpose for it.

There's a reason for it. And I'm responsible for it. Now here's where I give you one of my favorite tidbits that I think you'll enjoy regardless of your own personal background, and this is what I promised for you as your tidbit if you've gotten, if you're a secular person, if you've gotten through to this point with all of my Bible quoting, here's your ammo that you'll enjoy in a conversation with a Christian at some point.

Christians have a penchant for certain Bible verses, and some verses are common to many people. Christians like to have their favorite verse. I don't have a problem with that. I have a few that I find particularly comforting to my situation, but I enjoy a few of them. But there are two in particular that often stand out.

If you were to poll a group of Christians, and many people who would affiliate and self-identify as Christians are kind of nominal Christians, have a general idea of belief in God, and if you ask for a Bible verse and ask them for their favorite verse, I believe two of these verses would rise to the top.

One is a verse that is in Jeremiah 29 11, is the scripture reference for it, where it says, "For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future." That's a very popular verse.

The second verse is a passage in Philippians 4 4 13, which says, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." That was probably the more famous one. Now the challenge is many Christians are simply not very rigorous in understanding their own faith, and it's a real tragedy that has wide-ranging repercussions in our lives.

And many Christians especially are not rigorous in their understanding of the interpretation and application of scripture. So if you want to challenge a Christian a bit, here's what you can do. Ask them what their favorite verse is, and ask them, maybe they'll say it's Philippians 4 13, and ask them to quote it and quote it for them, "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." And ask them what are some of the things that they can do with Christ that they can't do without Christ, and see what they say.

Now usually you'll hear many things. My answer to that question in the past might have been something like, "Well, I can honor my boss and obey my boss with a good attitude at my job," or, "I can take a hard final exam and do well on it," or, "I can go through the death of a close friend." And that answer that I would have given in the past is to my own shame.

Because although those things may be true, and it's possible that that Bible verse could be a comfort to me, that's not what the Bible verse is talking about. That verse is talking about money. Specifically, how to live on your income. And I'll read it to you in context, choosing a slightly different translation than what I just quoted, but in context, a guy named Paul is writing this passage and he says, "How I praise the Lord that you are concerned about me again.

I know you have not always been concerned for me, but you didn't have the chance to help me. Not that I was ever in need, for I have learned how to be content with whatever I have. I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little, for I can do everything through Christ who gives me strength.

Even so, you've done well to share with me in my present difficulty." He's talking about money and specifically how to live on your income. How to be content with a full stomach or an empty and with plenty or with little. Now, if you're a Christian and I've caught you out a bit with your understanding of that verse, don't be too ashamed.

I was there myself in the past and I was thoroughly embarrassed by my lack of rigor in going through and understanding that passage. And if you're not a Christian, enjoy the ammunition to catch out your friends. That's my present to you. I won't even comment on Jeremiah 29 11, except to challenge you that if you've ever claimed that verse for your so-called life verse, read the entire book of Jeremiah and the 29 chapters before that, before you claim that.

And I'll challenge that. But my reason that I bring that up is for two reasons. God knows what I need and when I need it. And that passage goes on to discuss the economy of Christians, which is based on shareling liberally with those in need. That's an interesting integration to a system of money.

And that's where I live. If I have need, I'm confident that my needs will be met. So you say, "How do you teach that?" Well, that's where you'd have to kind of discern your audience a little bit, which is why I don't generally go into those things on the podcast.

But it has major impact. The other impact of that is that I can actually know God in whatever my circumstances, and I can be faithful when I have a lot and when I have a little. And so there are reasons for the circumstances that I face. And God is sovereign, and that discussion of God's sovereignty establishes the idea that God has a reason for the circumstances that I face.

There's a reason for $10 million, and there's a reason for $10. So the next natural question is, what is my responsibility in this deal? In my mind, there are two important things, stewardship and faithfulness. And these are kind of funny words. Stewardship is largely a lost concept in modern culture.

Probably the best example would be a financial advisor's stewardship over their client's assets. If you are a financial advisor and you're a steward over your client's assets, then those assets need to be expended and invested in line with the master, the client, the master's goals. Historically, wealth was physical.

So you needed a steward to handle your affairs. If you were going to take a trip, you couldn't just jump on an airplane and drive to the other side of the world and open up your Vanguard account and click, click, click through the internet browser, manage all of your portfolio.

It was physical. It was houses and farms and vineyards, and physical forms of wealth, gold, silver. So the Bible is replete with stories about masters and stewards. And the master entrusts money to a steward and goes on a trip. Then when the master returns, he demands an accounting of the steward's actions.

There are many, many, many stories on that theme. If you are vaguely familiar with Christian teaching, you would think of something like the parable of the talents. These stories teach that that is the Christian situation. The master is away on a trip and we are here on this earth as stewards of the master's resources.

And one day, the master will return and demand an accounting from us. So the major life challenge of the Christian standard is this. Nothing is mine. Nothing belongs to me. Because when you become a Christian, you become a slave to God. So that means that it's not my money, it's not my time, it's not my talents, not my abilities, it's not my life, it's not even my physical life.

When you become a follower of Christ, one of the prerequisites for that being a true statement is the acknowledgement of a total transference of sovereignty, a laying down of your own life, an entry into a form of slavery. And that's a major change. Most of us have lived our lives in a way that doesn't acknowledge the sovereignty of another.

We are sovereign over our own lives and that's how I used to live. And interestingly, this isn't actually true. We're not actually sovereign over our own lives in fullness, even though we live as though it is true. It's not actually true because there are always events that are outside all of our control.

As your homeowner's insurance policy says, "Some things are an act of God." But when you acknowledge, when you become a Christian and you acknowledge another's sovereignty over your life, then you're recognizing something that's true in a measure and then you're now living in accordance with it. And any time you can live in harmony with God's law, you can experience the blessings of it.

The Bible says in the book of Psalms and the book of Proverbs that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. It's almost the right ordering of your life. So I view money in this way. I'm simply a steward of the money. It's not mine. And that's an extremely unusual viewpoint in the modern world because we're trained to think of money as mine.

It's mine to do what I want with. It's mine to enjoy how I like. But it's not. It's not for me. I'm a steward. It's not mine. Now, don't for an instant think that I'm a perfect steward. I'm not. I'm learning and I hope I'm increasing in my faithfulness.

But if you think about the concept of stewardship, it brings in a balance and a tension because a steward should be using the master's resources to achieve the master's goals. So then you have to ask, "What's the first question? What are the master's goals?" And here's the tension. One of the master's goals is that the steward is being cared for.

It's important that a steward of a household be provided for. If you were left in charge of somebody's estate, you need a bedroom to stay in and you need clothes to wear. So the steward of a household needs to be cared for. Otherwise, there are many problems that could happen.

You could even say that it would probably be the joy of the master for the steward to be well cared for and well provided for. You should want this for all of the people that you do business with. I want the vendors with whom I'm doing business or the business partners, I want them to be making very nice profits so they'll stay in business.

You want your employees to be very well paid so that they're happy and content. I'm actually very leery myself of free software and free products without a business model behind them because I know they're unlikely to be well supported and are likely to disappear. That's why every business needs a sound business model.

That's why many of you send me emails from time to time and say, "Joshua, what's your business model?" because you like the show and you want it to be here. Without a business model, it's not going to be here. I'm working on that. Details coming soon. But you don't want the steward to be taken care of more than the master.

You don't want the steward's goals to take a higher priority than the master's goals. So consider the anger that you would rightly feel toward a financial advisor who is doing better than the client. The financial advisor is taking all the money and the client's not getting any of it.

You would be rightly justified in your anger. So that tension is healthy as far as, well, what are the master's goals and how much is too much for the steward to be cared for? Now I can't answer the question of, for you, what are the master's goals? It's a big question.

But I'll answer in a moment the ones that I feel are important for me to be involved with. So that concept of stewardship radically changes the discussion of money, which brings us to the final point that I need to discuss of worldview that you need to understand, and that's the concept of faithfulness.

I must be faithful in all things at all times. This is one of the overarching teachings of Scripture. It's that I must be faithful exactly where I am. It's an unusual word or character quality in our modern world. We don't talk much about concepts of virtue or character qualities.

But consider if that character quality or that virtue of faithfulness might not be something that you value. Would you like a faithful spouse? Would you enjoy having a faithful employee? Do you want to have a faithful brother or sister or faithful parent? Do you value a faithful friend? Would it be a joy to work with a faithful business partner?

Do you want a faithful child? That's what's taught to Christians. What's taught is no matter your circumstances, you must be faithful. You must be faithful to God in every circumstance, both in the visible common things and in the hidden secret things. You must be faithful to your employer in the things that are seen, but also in what is unseen.

You don't steal the stapler just because no one knows it's gone. You must be faithful to your employer. In biblical times, human slavery was common. In fact, throughout the Bible, the people of God actually went in and out of slavery multiple times with multiple masters. But slaves were always commanded to be faithful to their masters, regardless of circumstance.

And the responsibility went the other way too. Masters of slaves were commanded to be faithful to their slaves and to treat them with dignity and respect and fairness. In the same way, employers are commanded to be just. Rulers of government are commanded to rule with fairness. Husbands and wives are commanded to be faithful to one another.

Children are commanded to be faithful and obedient to their parents. It's across the board. So why should I even bother with that? Why should I even bother to be faithful? Well, there's many reasons. One, it's honoring to God and He will repay you according to your works. Again and again and again throughout the Bible, there are examples after examples after examples of faithfulness and faithlessness and the ensuing results.

One of my favorites is a guy named Joseph, and what's amazing, almost a third of the book of Genesis is devoted to his story. If you're not familiar with the story, Joseph was sold into slavery by his own brothers because he was jealous, they were jealous of him. But as a slave, he was faithful to his master, a man named Potiphar, who was the captain of Pharaoh's guard, kind of in charge of the elite special forces of his day.

But even though he was a slave and he was sold into slavery, he was faithful and he was raised from the lowest place of a common slave and he was put in charge as the chief steward of Potiphar's house. He was in many ways the second in command and nothing was done in that estate without his approval.

And the Bible says that Potiphar's household was blessed because of Joseph's service. He experienced great gain and financial increase. Now, what's amazing, Joseph was faithful to his master, Potiphar, even when Potiphar's wife wanted to have sex with him. He was good looking and she advanced upon him and was entreating or rather commanding him to have sex with her and he ran away.

He ran out of the house naked, leaving her holding his clothes. And so immediately she got angry at him for disobeying her orders and she accused him of attempted rape and falsely accused him of attempted rape. So Potiphar, the dude in charge, gets home and he hears the accusation and the story from his wife and he throws Joseph, the slave, in prison.

So Joseph was enslaved unjustly and then he was imprisoned unjustly. He acted righteously and was imprisoned because he acted righteously. But even though he was imprisoned unjustly, he's faithful in prison and over time he's promoted to be in charge over the whole prison, even to the point where the free man, who was the keeper of the prison, just didn't even bother to pay attention to anything that Joseph was in charge of.

He just went about his own life and dealt with a few things that he was caring for because he knew that Joseph would handle it. So he's in charge of the entire prison as a prisoner. Now over time, through a series of circumstances, the opportunity comes that he has an audience with Pharaoh to interpret a dream that Pharaoh has and Pharaoh winds up taking him out of prison and promoting him to be second in command over all of Egypt, second only to Pharaoh.

And miraculously, because of his installation as second in command, he's able to save not only the nation of Egypt from famine, but even his entire family. It's an incredible story. Joseph is the only person I'm aware of in the Old Testament who's presented as a man of total integrity, where we're only told about his strengths.

Everyone else, we see their strengths and their weaknesses, their successes and their failures, but with Joseph it's only integrity and strength. Or if we talk about faithlessness and the compensation and rewards of faithlessness, one of my favorite stories would be Jacob, Joseph's father. And so Jacob, he's a conniving cheat from the beginning of his life.

He's a conniving cheat and he's born. He has a twin brother named Esau, and later on as adults he cheats his own brother out of his brother's inheritance, his brother's portion of the inheritance, in exchange for a meal. And then later in life, in cahoots with his mother, he cheats his own father out of giving the patriarchal blessing to Esau, and he cheats his father out of the blessing by wearing animal skin, so he's furry, so he smells like his brother, who's a bit of an outdoor roustabout.

And then in fear of his life from his brother, who's much stronger and much more vigorous, he runs away from his brother and he flees to a relative's house, to his uncle's house. But one of my favorite stories, he gets his due in return. Probably the funniest verse in the Bible surrounds his marriage.

His uncle is a guy named Laban, and his uncle has two daughters. He has a pretty daughter named Rachel and a not so pretty daughter named Leah. And so Jacob wants to marry Rachel, and so he makes a deal with his uncle to work for his uncle for seven years, hard labor in exchange for Rachel's hand in marriage.

So after seven years, they have the wedding ceremony and presumably he drinks a lot, and it's a big feast, and presumably he drinks a lot, and then he goes into the tent with his wife for the wedding night. One of the funnier verses in the Bible says, "And then in the morning, behold, it was Leah." His uncle swapped in the not so pretty wife for the pretty wife.

So that's a rough way to start your marriage, finding yourself married to the wrong woman and finding yourself cheated out of access to the pretty sister. Now, anyway, I'll leave it there, and if you're interested, go find the rest of the story. It's quite good. If you do read it, you might ask yourself a challenging question about marriage.

If you're of the mind to account for a quick and easy divorce, then why didn't Jacob simply divorce Leah immediately and marry Rachel? After all, he was completely tricked. So consider that. But then again, if you're familiar with the passage and what happens after the story, you should immediately argue back with me and say, "Oh yeah?

Well then why was Jacob permitted later to go ahead and marry the pretty one and have a polygamous marriage?" And I would say, "Touché," and we'll save that important and interesting discussion for a different format than a personal finance podcast. Back to money. There are other reasons to be faithful.

It's an example to men and women around. It may even result in increased personal gain. The Bible says if you're faithful in little things, you'll be faithful in large ones. But if you're dishonest in little things, you won't be honest with greater responsibility. And if you're untrustworthy about worldly wealth, who's going to trust you the true riches of heaven?

And if you're not faithful with other people's things, why should you be trusted with the things of your own? So I must be faithful with how I handle money because it's a test of how I handle more important things. Now with that as background of my worldview, my answers as to what I would do if I unexpectedly received a $10 million windfall will make a little bit more sense to you.

If I received that unexpected windfall, I would be sure that there is a very important reason or perhaps many very important reasons for me to receive it. And I'd hit my knees at the weight of that responsibility, praying that I would have the ability to be faithful with it and not give in to temptation to turn aside.

Because when you view money in the way that I do, you might quickly recognize the tremendous responsibility that comes in with money. To whom much is given, much is required. And I've already been given much. And thus, much is already required of me. But at least my experience so far has been incremental, little things at a time, able to grow in responsibility step by step by step.

But to all of a sudden receive a ton of money all at once would be a massive responsibility. There's a proverb that says, "Give me neither poverty nor riches. Give me just enough to satisfy my needs. For if I grow rich, I may deny you and say, 'Who is the Lord?' And if I am too poor, I may steal and thus insult God's holy name." So the first thing I would do would be to try to understand what is the purpose of the money.

Maybe there's some monster financial need that's going to present itself and the money just needs to go right through me. Maybe it's 10 million to me and all of a sudden, boom, there's a need for 10 million dollars and it all needs to be given away. I don't know.

The hypotheticals are always dangerous because they remove God's sovereignty from the situation. When we get into if this, then that, we're often constructing life scenarios in which we don't actually know facts. It's one thing to have a discussion about something that has actually happened, but it's tough to know the reasons behind hypothetical situations.

So that's one of the whole dangers of even my answering it, but I'm going to take the bait and answer in specifics. So specifically my approach though, assuming that there's not some massive need right in front of me that I quickly become aware of that I need to give the money to.

Again, there's a need for 10 million dollars and I just sense, "Okay, I need to give the money to that." Then I would be just simply integrating the money into the normal flow of my life with my current financial priorities. Here's specifically what I would do. I think I'd probably set aside maybe two to three million dollars of the 10 million dollars for my needs and the needs of my family.

I think that's a number that would very well provide for exactly what we need in comfort. I would first pay off my mortgage. I owe about $160,000 on my mortgage. With numbers that big, the theoretical financial benefit from having a low rate fixed interest mortgage payment as compared to the emotional peace of mind for my family is utterly meaningless.

In my current scenario, the financial benefit of having that mortgage is very meaningful. But with 10 million dollars in the bank, it wouldn't be at all meaningful. So I'd just be mortgage free in very short order and enjoy the emotional peace of mind that comes from that. There are a few things I would buy.

I would buy some stand-up paddle boards, believe it or not. It costs me like, I don't know, about $1,400 or so. Stand-up paddle boards have been on my list for a very, very long time. I've been waiting to get some for like three or four years. I just haven't been able to justify the price.

They're super in demand and the prices haven't come down like I thought they would. The toughest thing about them is that I'm a big guy and so the extra big ones, I need a big one, are extra expensive. So I'd get a big one for me and a little one for my wife.

I think a stand-up paddle board is actually my ideal version of a boat. I don't really want the hassle of owning an actual boat, especially not at my current life stage. It's a major pain and especially if it's just a part-time hobby, it's a major pain. But it's super nice where I live to be able to get out on the water on a Friday evening with my family and stand-up paddle boards would be ideal for that type of family outing, especially where I live.

That or a canoe can also work, something like that. You put a cooler on there and a couple of chairs and you paddle over to a little island somewhere, a little sandy island on the beach or something like that and have a nice little picnic on the beach. There's no hassle.

There's no motors that you have to maintain. There's no stickers that you have to buy. It's just a lot easier and it gets you out on the water and it gives a good source of exercise, kind of stacking the benefits together. Maybe later in life, I want a boat when my kids are older and they can enjoy it with me but I just don't see it right now.

I just assume if I want to go fishing, I just assume charter a big boat and do the fishing party instead of having the hassle of owning a boat. Incidentally, if any of you have any ideas for how to get a good deal on stand-up paddle board, let me know because I've been looking for a long time and I've never been able to find a deal.

So that's the first thing on my buy list. The second thing, I've only got three things by the way. The second thing is I buy one of those nice big fancy iMacs for my wife and a big fancy Mac laptop for me. I'd like my wife to have one just so she can do her artsy stuff.

We have a perfectly powerful older Windows desktop that she uses but something about having all the fancy creative stuff on the Apple that integrated together would be fun to have. She likes making picture books and things like that. I think she'd enjoy having it all integrated. If I all of a sudden received that kind of windfall, it would make me happy to give her one.

I get a fancy laptop for me. My current laptop works fine but it's kind of slow. I've just never been able to justify the expense of Apple products. I've just never been able to justify them. But with $10 million in the bank, I think I'd go ahead and splurge.

Then finally, I'd buy an RV and I'd probably buy a fancier one than otherwise I would. I don't know. Maybe I'd spend $150,000 on a nice diesel pusher or $100,000. I don't know. I've wanted an RV for a long time and I love to drive and I love road trips.

One of the major reasons that I built Radical Personal Finance in the way that I did is so that it could fund a lifestyle regardless of where I live. An RV is an ideal way to do that for me. So I guess I'd spend like $260,000 of it on those things, paying off the mortgage and those fun little toys.

More importantly, I'd set up an income plan. I'd set up an income plan for my family's financial needs. It would look something like this. I think I'd buy on the order of about five rental houses plus one for every child. So today, that would be seven. We have two kids and five rental houses plus one for each child.

I'd pay cash and I'd just have the rental money as a backup financial independence plan. I'd follow John Schaub's plan for that. I'd buy some single family, three two houses, carefully chosen, not in necessarily the rental market. So let's just say in my market they cost $200,000 each and there's seven of them.

That'd be about a million four. That's basically the backup in case my business fails. That's more than enough money to live on. Conservatively, I would net in my rental market, conservatively net after expenses, $1,200 a month. So $1,200 a month times five, that's $6,000 a month plus one for each child.

It would give me a ton of wiggle room. That's far more money than I need, especially right now. Who knows? Maybe later as my family grows, we'll need more. I don't know. But it's more than I need now. The idea behind the one house per child is a dream of mine.

I'd love to help each of my kids buy a house by the time they're in about their 20s or so. I'm super inspired by Steve Maxwell's story with his kids that I interviewed on the show, how his kids bought their houses debt free by the time they were in their 20s.

If possible, I'd love to, in addition to that, be able to give my kids a house. So do something like help them to live in one and rent the other, something like that. Now that's just a dream. I don't know if it'll happen. A lot will depend on what actually happens over the next 15 years.

A lot of things could change. But if I could train my children and help them to develop their character so that they would be able to handle a large gift of money or a large gift of property, I think that would be ideal. For me, I'm very attracted to the idea of real estate because I can use it for multiple benefits.

And specifically with regard to kids, I can use it to teach them about investing. And I also like the fact that it's a lot of hard work. And so this would give me an opportunity to put my children to work in a tangible, real, meaningful way. The problem with using stock analysis as a basis of teaching about investing, and I plan to do that a little bit, but the problems that I see with that is it's tough to do effectively, especially in the public markets.

It's very intellectual and it's not tangible. So if I have an eight-year-old, how many eight-year-olds are going to want to sit down and be intrigued by the sticker prices of stocks? Now, if I do have an eight-year-old who seems inclined in that direction, then I'm open to doing that.

But that seems rare to me. Warren Buffett was that way, but I ain't Buffett and I'd be surprised if my kids were either. But we could do something like drive around and look at houses together. And then I can have them research market values and we can look through and try to run a spreadsheet and see what would be the rents be.

And they can get on the phone and call around for rental rates and we can go to the closing together and then we can go and mow the lawns together. And so that gives me an opportunity to teach them and train them through productive, meaningful work. And I really like that aspect of the need for work.

We can go and we can paint together and that builds the opportunity for us to be together, but also for them to have an outlet for energy and to be able to see the direct monetary impact of work. So my hope would be that if I can train those skills, that those skills would go with them throughout their life.

I'd set aside, I don't know, $150,000 in cash reserves for the household. That'd be several years of living expenses in case of disaster. I'd put $50,000 in cash and stick $100,000, maybe some life insurance policies or something like that. I'd buy $150,000 of something like gold coins and store them abroad in case they're ever needed to start my life over again in a different place.

And that would use up somewhere around $2 million-ish of the money. And that would provide for my first responsibility which is the living needs of my family. Now, the reason I'm answering in this segmented way is because of the idea of the windfall. This is my plan as far as I'm doing it, but right now the two and I'm about to go over the $8 million now, they're all integrated.

And so I'm just working my way down the next goals. But in my mind, if I came into that amount of cash, the $2 million would take care of my needs to provide for my family and kind of make that financial independence plan with excess. Now, that leaves me with say $8 million-ish to work with for investing and massive growth.

And I feel a responsibility for all of the $10 million to grow it and multiply it. But in my mind, I would mentally kind of segregate it and focus on investing the $8 million. My first investment would be in radical personal finance. And I did do some things that I've not done because I bootstrapped it.

I would hire some staff to help me with the business and I would immediately delegate a lot of the busy work that I've currently been doing. I bootstrapped the thing so far and I've done most of the work myself with a little bit of help here and there. The challenge is that I'm not spending all of my time in the areas where I'm best in the world.

Rather, I'm spending some of my time where I'm best in the world and sometimes in – some of the time in other areas. So ultimately, over time, I need to transition to spending all of my time at what I'm best in the world at and hire everything else done.

But the challenge for an entrepreneur, especially one who's bootstrapping their business, is when do I do that? And I've made the mistake of – in past businesses of doing it too soon, just kind of being committed to the philosophy without actually practically looking at my situation and saying, "Well, I'm going to go ahead and do it here." And I may be making the mistake of doing it too late right now.

I don't know. I'll look back and know in the future. But if I had that kind of windfall, I'd make some quick changes and I'd bring in a little bit of help. I don't need much. I'd hire some marketing help, a little bit of help on the website. I'd hire some stuff done like transcribing shows that has a high cost and I think it has a low return, but it might have some marginal impact.

I'd probably hire some professional writing help to help me with some projects. But for me, Radical Personal Finance is a tremendously important project. It's a business, but it's also something that's impactful. I use the word "calling." I know it can make an impact. I get the emails that prove to me that it makes an impact.

But it also can make a very healthy profit. I haven't done a hugely perfect job of maximizing profit, but I am committed to doing so and changes on that coming in the future. But I would probably pull back on the amount of content that I create. So far, I've made a tactical decision to make one of my unique selling propositions the sheer amount and depth of content that I create.

But if I were all of a sudden charged with – and that's a good decision at this point in my life because one of my major assets is this business. But if all of a sudden I were charged with managing the $8 million, I'd have a ton of work – or the $10 million total.

I'd have a ton of work to do to effectively invest that money and to effectively grow it, effectively give it, etc. I would need to have a major upgrade of my skills. I would transition radical personal finance probably away from the CFP-type conversations that I often have and into a deeper level business podcast.

Now, that might be a tactical mistake in terms of the audience size, but it would be a strategic decision because it would help me to develop my skills of business oversight and supervision, which are skills that I need to develop. I'm actually going there with my content in the future.

It's part of the strategic plan. You just haven't seen it on the show yet. Next, I would focus on investing in private businesses and enterprises that systematically invest in and help people. You'll notice so far in one of my investments a conspicuous absence of publicly traded securities. That's a bit unusual for a former stockbroker.

I'm not committed to not investing in stocks. I'm still willing to do it even though at the moment I haven't currently done it. But the thing I've realized is that only a few of my goals are effectively accomplished through investing in large publicly traded companies. That's not to say that your goals are not effectively served.

Simply that my goals are not as effectively served with that course of investing as other courses of investing. Here would be an example to illustrate. Let's say that I find a good publicly traded company that I want to invest in. Let's just say Coca-Cola for example. I don't really have any beef with Coca-Cola.

I could probably find something to have a beef with them if I try, but I don't want to try. I prefer not to have too many battles going on at any one time. So I buy some shares of Coca-Cola stock. Well run company, blue chip. What do I get in exchange for owning my shares of Coca-Cola Corporation?

Well, I get dividends and potential stock growth. At my current scale of net worth or even with a scale of net worth of $8 million, what impact would I have on Coca-Cola? None at all. Zero impact. So the money has one single benefit. I get a little bit of growth and a few dollars of dividends per share.

What does that do for me? Well, it enriches me a little bit and allows me to have other people running a company that I own and paying me money. So let's say I see a homeless guy or a homeless gal on the side of the street. Well, I'm getting off of I-95.

What can I do to help them in that situation? Well, basically I can toss them a few bucks. Does that help? Eh, maybe. I would say big maybe. But flip it around and let's say that instead of purchasing shares of Coca-Cola stock, I have a rental house. Well, now I can offer that homeless guy or gal a day's work with a lawnmower chopping down weeds.

I can feed them a good lunch and make sure they're well-fed. I can pay them well for their work and I can give them the opportunity to earn their wages with dignity instead of begging on the side of the street. I can get involved in their life a little bit.

I can learn about them as a person and maybe I have additional opportunities that will be able to help them with more work. Then, I might be able to give them some but at least then I've offered the opportunity for them to work. And their work will help me.

It will help my profit on my house and my investment. But it gives me an additional benefit of being able to provide work to help them. Now, of course, these aren't exactly apples to apples. Of course, I could offer to that homeless guy or gal to come and paint my house, my personal house and I could still invest in Coca-Cola stock.

But my point is that if I have opportunities of business using rental – a rental house as a mini little business that requires work, then I can have an impact on my community. Now, remember of course that that comes with a trade-off. If my goal were simply to pack up my stuff and go sail the world for a few years, then perhaps the publicly traded stocks are the better move.

They're less work, less hassle, greater safety, things like that. If I can just put all my money in Coca-Cola stock and spend my dividends, those dividends will spend in every port in the world. I don't have to worry about my house burning down or a thief breaking in or a tenant falling through the floor or any of that stuff.

But those aren't necessarily my goals for my life, at least not right now. They may be for yours. So for me, what I'm looking for is multiple benefits from my investments, not just money. I'm looking to – to use the permaculture phrase – stack my functions. I would have to make a very serious and diligent study of opportunities, business opportunities where capital is the constraining factor to business and investment entry.

This is a very important point. If I had an $8 million portfolio to invest, I would have a very different approach to my investing than I currently do in my current lifestyle. Right now at the beginning phase of my life, I don't have a lot of financial capital. So I'm looking for investment opportunities where sweat equity is valuable.

Example, what does radical personal finance cost? A couple thousand bucks of equipment, a few hundred bucks a month of fees, of hosting fees and things like that, and thousands of hours of hard work. But what's the return on investment? Well, right now with nothing more than the Patreon campaign, I have about $1,900 a month of gross revenue into radical personal finance.

That's just Patreon. That's going to change. That number has been remarkably stable. Now let's say I pull off $400 a month of direct costs of running the show and also the Patreon fees that they pull out of your contributions. Let's just say that I net $1,500 per month. Let's say that's stable and it doesn't grow.

$1,500 a month times 12 equals $18,000 per year of profit from a business that has been a huge amount of work on my part but not really that big of a financial outlay. Compare that to say Coca-Cola. What's their dividend yield right now? Like 3%-ish or McDonald's, what, 3.5%?

You can fact check me on that stuff, but I should be pretty close. If I were going to create $18,000 of annual profit from a 3% dividend rate stock, I would need a portfolio of $600,000 of capital. Take $18,000 divided by .03 and you wind up with a number of $600,000 of capital.

That's a bunch of money. But if I had a $600,000 portfolio of Coca-Cola stock, that's about what I would net as far as dividends, 3% annual profit. So in this way of thinking, of comparison, I've invested a year of my life and built a $600,000 asset. So even though my actual earned income for the past year of my life has been quite low, the payoff from my time on paper, at least in my own mental order of priority, is pretty massive.

Now they're not truly comparable because the Coca-Cola dividend would actually be passive and radical personal finance is the exact opposite of passive income. I spent a lot of time working on it and that's what you're paying for. But the point I'm bringing here is I'm focusing on where the constraint on investment is not a financial constraint, but rather a skill constraint and a quality of product constraint and a time constraint.

At this stage of my life, I have a little bit of financial capital to invest and my investment goal is location independent income and to be earned in a way of a lifestyle that I enjoy. I have a lot of human capital that I can invest. So I've chosen a business that has a very low barrier to entry on the financial capital side, but a high barrier of entry on the human capital side.

Starting a podcast is easy and cheap in financial terms. You can do it with your phone. You don't even need anything else. I can do the whole thing with an iPhone. But creating a great podcast is hard and expensive in human capital terms. So I've chosen the market where I believe I can compete the most effectively and I'm doing the best I can and I'm growing and I'm learning and I'm competing semi-effectively because I have lots of competitors, but I can make up with human skill, my background, my knowledge and developing my abilities, I can compensate.

Now if I had an investment portfolio of $8 million, that would be a very different equation because now I have money to invest and I would need to massively adjust the scale of my investments to be appropriate to my net worth. It's tough to invest $8 million into a podcast.

Where on earth would you spend the money? I don't know. Maybe I could invest $10,000 or $20,000 effectively. Maybe more if I started hiring full-time staff, but frankly, I don't have a clue where I would spend $100,000 effectively in this business and get any meaningful rate of return. The constraint is not financial capital.

But there are a bunch of markets that I would need to pivot to where I would be looking at investing and I would have an advantage based upon the financial capital. On that basis, I would be an accredited investor. So that means a bunch of the rest of the people are locked out because they're not accredited investors.

So some of the juicy investments are set up for me. That's how the accredited investor system works. In some ways, I would actually be a big gun in some markets, but I would have an ideal scenario because I don't have the flip side. I don't have Warren Buffett's problem of figuring out where on earth do I invest a billion dollars.

That's tough. That's why his returns are steadily decreasing and he says it explicitly. How do you invest billions and billions of dollars? It's hard. So I would just need to find and figure out where could I put $8 million to work in an area where my own personal strengths give me a competitive advantage and where I can get the maximum return on investment both in financial benefit and other lifestyle benefits.

Frankly, I'm not sure what that is. I'm not there. So I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about it for myself. If you're there, you need to think about it. The challenge is that when I was a financial advisor, the automatic answer was, well, mutual funds. The investors that you work with as a financial advisor, at least the type of structure that I was in, are looking for mutual funds or looking for stocks or something like that.

But you reach a point and there's a difference in investment perspective. If you've got the $8 million, you've probably spent a lot of time thinking about this. So for me, I don't know. I might buy a McDonald's franchise. I might buy a hotel. I might buy a bunch of farmland.

I might become a real estate developer. I might buy and run a grass-fed cattle ranch. I might develop an eco-village somewhere in the world. I might build some of my sustainable, cheap housing ideas. I might start a coffee shop or a restaurant. I don't know. When I'm there, I'll let you know what I'm doing.

But I really don't know. But I would take it very seriously and I'd look for the markets where I can invest with a competitive edge and I could meet multiple goals. I want a unique and lasting competitive advantage. I want a business that is morally upright and honorable. That business must bring value to society.

It must not be a leech on society. I want control of the enterprise. I have such oddball priorities compared to many people. It is very difficult for me to consider how I'd have a business partner with the same priorities. So I would need control of the enterprise. I want a business that serves people and improves the communities where it's located.

My highest priority is people, which I'll come to in a moment. I want a business that I'm excited to be involved with. I want to be on the cutting edge of something. I want to be proud of the impact that my companies make on the world, whatever that company is and whatever those impacts are.

For me, this is a big deal because the number one thing that leads to entrepreneurial and business success is the amount of time spent selling. I can't sell something I'm not excited about. So I've got to be proud and excited of it. Overall, the major theme of my business and investing pursuits both now and in the future is this.

I want to invest in people. As a Christian, I'm instructed, which is why I spent so much time on the worldview, as a Christian, I'm instructed to not worry about the treasures of this world, but rather to worry about the treasures in the next world. Jesus commanded his disciples in this way.

He said, "Don't store up treasures here on earth where moths eat them and rust destroys them and where thieves break in and steal. Store your treasures in heaven where moths and rust cannot destroy and thieves do not break in and steal. Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be." So the question is, how do you actually do that?

There are a few ways, but today I'm just going to share with you the way that is most meaningful to me right now, and I'd encourage you to study and think out some of the other ways. But in this context, the number one way to store your treasures in heaven is to invest in people's lives.

What's the same between heaven and earth and what's different? Well, there are many things that are different, but what's the same is, among others things, but two things just that are specific to this discussion, what's the same between heaven and earth is the presence of God and the presence of people.

God is in both places and people are in both places, whole people. So as a Christian, my focus is on serving, helping, ministering to, and loving people. In the Bible, there's a story about when the religious teachers of the law at that time were testing Jesus, they were testing him on his interpretation and understanding of law.

There's a version of this story in the book of Mark and there's a different version in the book of Luke. They're slightly different, but they have a common theme. And the religious teachers asked Jesus, they said, "What's the most important commandment?" Or in the version in Luke, the man asks, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" And Jesus responds, he says, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself." Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.

And I believe that's how we invest in people. If we love God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, and all our strength, it will lead us to care about what he cares about and to act on it. And what does God care about? The kingdom of God.

What makes up that kingdom? People. You don't have to wait for $10 million to invest in people. I'll share with you, you know what the height of religious expression is for me, one of the holiest things I do? Washing the dishes. It's one of the most spiritual things I can do.

Why? Because it's one way of loving my life. What does it cost me? Time and focus. You know what another one of the most holy things I do is as a Christian? Going to work to provide for my family. It's the zenith of spirituality. I believe you store up treasures in heaven by loving and caring for people.

That starts with your spouse and continues with your children. I forgot to mention this earlier, but I think one of the things that we would do if we had a $10 million windfall is we'd probably adopt some children. I'm so burdened by the situation facing children in our society.

I feel like we're living in a veritable holocaust, but it's hidden from day to day life. If you look at the numbers, Hitler killed perhaps 6 million Jews, or if you include the additional 5 million non-Jewish victims of his work, you find a total of 11 million people-ish died.

In the United States alone, we kill over a million babies a year. Since 1973, in the US alone, we've killed over 53 million babies. On a global basis, the conservative estimates are about 40 million babies per year. I don't know about you, but that burdens me so much because I often wonder what would I have done if I were living in Austria or Germany 75 years ago?

Would I have cared enough about people to do something about the murder being committed every day? Would I have just gone along in quiet comfort, living my life and grandly pleasing myself without a care in the world? I often ask myself this question. I say, "Can a person who opposes abortion ethically do so if they're not willing to invite the unwanted baby into their home?" My wife and I talk about that.

So far, we haven't sensed that the time is right for us to do that just because of the strain that it would bring in our family at the moment, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were in the future. The challenge with adoption is that it's a major financial commitment up front based upon the way that our society handles it.

It's different from having your own babies biologically, so it requires a very different type of financial planning, but it's also a financial commitment ongoing. Especially as your family grows, it brings additional expenses to support your spouse. So there's a major financial component to it. Anyway, I got off track.

My point is investing in people, it starts with your spouse. It continues with your children. It continues with investing in your closest neighbor, whoever that is, and then proceeds from there to society at large and across the globe. It goes through whatever doors are open to you. Now, there are many other ways to store up treasures in heaven.

I'm just sharing what is meaningful to me at the moment. For you, it may be different, but that's one of the major themes. Those are some of the ideas that I have about what I would do with the money. Now, I've ignored a bunch of important topics. This show is already a beast, already very long, and some of you will astutely observe that I've actually completely skipped talking about giving, which is one of the most important things to consider and frankly is the place to start with all money.

Although sometimes I use the phrasing of the concept of pay yourself first, I really don't like it because I think that giving should always be done first. I like to think of the concept of pay yourself second after you give, but I've avoided the discussion here partly because I have some unorthodox views on it, which I don't want to go into today, and partly because I wouldn't have any idea of how to actually give away a million dollars well or two million dollars well.

I don't know. We'll discuss that sometime in the future, but giving money away well is a tough thing to do. So just for now, consider it rolled up into investing. For me, investing doesn't all have to do with a financial return. But these are my answers. It's the best answer that I have for the question of what I would do if I won the lottery.

But in thinking about the question for a few weeks now in preparation for this show, I've come to the conclusion that it really wouldn't change much in my life. It would just bring a ton of responsibility that frankly I'm not sure that I'm ready for. I mean, certain aspects would be fine.

I'd like to have an RV and if I won the lottery, I'd probably buy a big fancy diesel coach instead of the more modest used class C RV that I'd otherwise choose. I don't know. But I still think I'll wind up getting the RV at some point because it'll serve a purpose in my family and it'll serve a need at a time.

I might trot right out and buy those paddleboards quicker if I won the lottery, but I don't really need them. I mean, I've sat on them for four years just kind of watching and waiting for a deal. My son isn't old enough to care about paddleboards. We just sit and play in the lagoon at this point.

That's more fun for him than being on the surfboard. The beginning I started with saying I've been blessed with a great life already. I truly have. I've enjoyed some incredible peak experiences. I've traveled the world and dined on the best food that money can buy and had some of the most incredible experiences.

I've seen some of the wonders of the world. I've been so fortunate. And I dare say that you have too. If you haven't, you can have all those things without the need to win the lottery. Although thinking about the lottery is a useful mental exercise to understand what the inner desires of your heart are, don't put your hopes or your dreams on winning the lottery.

It might bless you and give you an opportunity to bless others, but it'll also bring a tremendous burden and responsibility into your life and it could even destroy your life if you aren't careful. We live in one of the most incredible times of human history. Think about this. You can get onto an airplane and in a few hours be on a different continent.

Imagine that. Every single one of you could take a European vacation this summer if you wanted to. It's a few hundred bucks for a plane ticket. I don't know, $800 depending on where you're going. You could go see the Duomo and the Pantheon and the Parthenon and the Sistine Chapel and David and the Eiffel Tower and the Tower of London.

If you saved for a few months and focused on it, every single one of you listening could do it. Think about how luxuriously you and I already live. Every single one of us can have the best bed that money could buy, the most beautiful bedroom, the most beautiful living room, the most beautiful kitchen that money can have.

All it takes is a comfortable mattress and the right linens and a few coats of paint and some well-lit artwork. If you won the lottery, would you really buy a 15-bedroom mansion? How many bedrooms do you need? You can only sleep in one at a time. Think about how luxurious your transportation already is.

I just bought a $500 car and that car is an absolute marvel. It's a 1998 Toyota Corolla. It takes me down the road at 70 miles an hour in padded, air-conditioned comfort. It's smooth. It's quiet. It's comfortable. I can drive over 30 miles on a single gallon of fuel and I can spend my time in the car listening to discussions with the smartest people in the world for free through a podcast.

How amazing is that? Now most of you have cars that are a bit fancier than that. I have a fancier car too and I'll probably have fancier cars in the future. But does it really make that big of a difference? I've driven my share of $100,000 cars. Unless you're at the track, you can hardly get things out of third gear before you're stuck behind some – I don't know, some other – someone else.

What about your food? All of us have enough to eat. Most of us have more than we need. You can have the best food in the world, every single one of you and me. If it's a few hundred dollars to do so, just cancel your cable bill for a few months and schedule the fancy dinner at Chateau – whatever.

Chateau Jean-Paul. I don't know what the fancy names are. But frankly, it's not that much. I have a brother of mine – and you don't even have to spend that much to get great food. I have a brother of mine who's a foodie and he laughs at me. But I really enjoy silly cheap things like pot stickers from TGI Fridays or a barbecue sandwich from Sonny's.

Now I like the foodie stuff as well. Recently a new friend of mine who's listened to the show invited us over for dinner and served us this amazing pineapple bacon guacamole and homemade prosciutto as an appetizer. It was incredible, total foodie and totally delicious. You can learn to make that with a few minutes of free instruction on YouTube.

Isn't that incredible? What about wine? One of my favorites, believe it or not, is a box of Merlot from the Total Wine and More that I walk to from my house. That box of wine has four bottles in it and I can get it on sale for $12 a box.

That's $3 a bottle and it's really, really good. Is it the best in the world? I'm sure it's not. But who defines best? Once you get free of the need to impress people by how much money you spend, you can just simply drink what you like. And the limit of my appreciation is usually defined by my palate, not by my pocketbook.

Now those are all consumption items, but they don't cost much. They bring a little bit of joy, but not the most joy. And how many people do you know that have all of those things and more and don't have peace? That don't really seem to get joy from those things?

You know what brings the most joy? Peace with God changes everything. And giving and serving and loving. How much does it cost you to sit down and have a cup of tea with your spouse every night? Try it. Turn the TV off and put the kids to bed and just sit and talk.

Just work to understand her. And I say her because usually we as husbands are the worst with this. Just try to understand your spouse, him or her, and love them. How much does it cost to arrange to meet your friends at the park and play a game of ultimate Frisbee together, and yet how fun is it?

How much does it cost to volunteer your time and your talents to help someone move or to help your neighbor put up their Christmas lights or to start a community garden or to adopt a child or open an orphanage? I have zero desire to be Bill Gates. Can you imagine the difficulties that man faces every day?

Again, he has to figure out how to effectively give away billions of dollars. He has to worry about his kids getting kidnapped. Most important, he has to figure out how to keep his kids grounded from a young age. So pray for him when you think of it. He's got a tremendous responsibility.

But the things of consumption are not meaningful in the long run. And some of the most important things and valuable things we do are wrapped up in serving. And serving costs little to no money but has profound benefits. The interesting thing is that the psychologists have proven the value of this again and again and again.

So you can do what I do, which is simply follow what was written down thousands of years ago and has been proved again and again and again and again and again and again as being true, called the Bible, or you can go and read the latest psychological research and integrate that.

That's good too. But recognize that the deeper, more valuable things of life are generally not what is advertised on TV or what is caught up in the insert of a fashion magazine. Don't worry too much about winning the lottery. Worry about developing the skills and the character and the capacity to be able to handle that much money and not let it destroy your life.

That way, you'll win either way. The purpose of becoming financially independent is not necessarily so that you are financially independent, although I'm looking forward to that day myself, but rather so that you can become the kind of person who is financially independent. And once you've achieved that character, financial independence will just be the starting place.

If you have the capacity and the skills and the character to handle the money, then you'll be able to handle it without destroying your life. If you don't have that, then the money that you have is probably destroying your life and the other money is going to destroy your life too.

Focus on winning either way. How? Well, in the words of a famous theologian named John Wesley, "Earn all you can, give all you can, save all you can." Although I don't think that's a perfectly accurate statement, I think it's probably the pithiest statement. Certainly, he wraps up more truth in 16 words than – excuse me, 12 words than I can in a couple hours, but I hope this has been useful.

Hope this show has been useful to you. I know there's a lot here and I know my way of answering these questions goes against the grain of how many people would approach it, but when you see life as integrated as I do, you can't disconnect the answers. Your life goals will inform your investing strategy and your perspective on money will inform the rest of your life.

I actually explicitly or specifically ignore the second part of the question from Mike about the specifics of how to take the payments and etc. because the annoyingly consistent answer from me would be, "Well, it depends. It depends on your goals." I don't play the lottery so I wouldn't have those options, but I've shared with you what I would do and for me, I would take the lump sum because I would want to have control over it to invest it the way that I do if I won the lottery, but I don't.

So the lump sum would be – that was why I went at all that whole thing. But if I had a client approach me for financial advice, the first thing we would do would be to have a discussion about their goals, their values, their worldview, what they're trying to accomplish and if their goals were consumption, then my advice would be, "Well, you better take the payments and not the lump sum because that way you'll be able to assure your income to fund your lifestyle without going broke." But if their goals were different, then the answer would be different and you've got to work through and sort through what the goals are, what the worldview is and then you'll clearly be able at that point in time to be able to see how to apply it.

So I hope this has been helpful to you. I thank you so much for listening. I thank each and every one of you for allowing me to be here every day, hopefully encouraging you and inspiring you and helping you. That's my hope and I thank you for so many of you who support the show.

That's what gives me the monetary ability to actually do this. If you'd like to help support the show, you can go to RadicalPersonalFinance.com/patron. We are exclusively listener-funded directly from that. I'm going to be making some changes on that in the future just to be able to support my family a little bit better, which is a satisfaction of those goals.

But I would invite you, if this has been helpful to you, please go to RadicalPersonalFinance.com/patron and become a supporting patron of the show. Thank you all so much for listening. Be back with you soon. Thank you for listening to today's show. Please subscribe to the podcast with our free mobile app so you don't miss a single episode.

Just search the App Store on your device for Radical Personal Finance and you'll find our free app. If you have received value from the content of this show, please consider becoming a patron. Your financial support is how I pay the bills for the show and how I plan to grow our content.

You can support the show with as little as a dollar a month or as much as you feel the content is worth. Details are at RadicalPersonalFinance.com/patron. If you'd like to contact me personally, my email address is Joshua@RadicalPersonalFinance.com or connect with the show on Twitter @RadicalPF and at Facebook.com/RadicalPersonalFinance. This show is intended to provide entertainment, education, and financial enlightenment, but your situation is unique and I cannot deliver any actionable advice without knowing anything about you.

Please, develop a team of professional advisors who you find to be caring, competent, and trustworthy, and consult them because they are the ones who can understand your specific needs, your specific goals, and provide specific answers to your questions. I've done my absolute best to be clear and accurate in today's show, but I'm one person and I make mistakes.

If you spot a mistake in something I've said, please come by the show page and comment so we can all learn together. Until tomorrow, thanks for being here. The holidays start here at Ralph's with a variety of options to celebrate traditions old and new. Whether you're making a traditional roasted turkey or spicy turkey tacos, your go-to shrimp cocktail, or your first Cajun risotto, Ralph's has all the freshest ingredients to embrace your traditions.

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