The LA Kings holiday pack is back. The perfect gift for the hockey fan in your life. A three game pack starts at just $159 and includes a holiday blanket. Buy today and you'll receive an additional game for free. Don't miss out. Visit lakings.com/holiday today. Hey, radicals, welcome to the show.

My name is Joshua Sheets, and I'm your host. We're going to call this episode of the Radical Personal Finance podcast more of a coaching call. This is not necessarily, this is not, certainly not our traditional podcast format. I doubt today's show will be over 10 minutes. Here during the month of July, I'm going to be releasing a few short shows here and there as I spend some time loving my wife and loving my kids as we transition to enjoying our new baby here.

So today, I want you to take the time that you would normally spend listening to the show. Listen to the next few minutes of coaching advice and then turn off the show or turn off however you listen, phone, internet, whatever, and spend a few minutes thinking if you're driving, if you can't write, or spend a few minutes writing a few things down.

And I want to talk to you about the question of goals versus means. And I'm not quite sure if that's the right word for it, but you'll understand in just a moment what I mean. Here's what I mean. What are your true goals? What are your actual goals? Very few people actually know what their real goals are.

Now certainly if you take some time and you write down a list of goals, you'll be able to come up with some things that you're working towards. But depending on how much time you spent thinking about them and working them, those goals might or might not be your actual goals.

Now only you are going to know and be able to discern and tell whether they're your goals or whether they're your actual goals. But it's an important thinking process to go through. Let me give you an example. This example comes from my life. I'm going to give you three specific examples, all of which come from my life.

But let's start with this one. Most of my friends who know me know that I'm, I was going to say semi-obsessed, but the reality is obsessed with the concept of travel. My wife likes to joke about how much time I spend looking at different things on travel. Specifically what appeals to me the most of all the different types of travel that I've done is what now has the fancy word of overlanding, overland travel.

The idea is you have your own vehicle and you get to travel when and where you want. I have no problem backpacking and using public transportation, but I just kind of like being able to go where and when I want and control my own itinerary. Now the interesting thing when you get into the world of travel and you start looking around in the forums online and the websites that cater to this segment and this demographic, people who share the interest, it is absolutely astounding how much money and time people spend outfitting their vehicles for travel and how little time and money people actually spend traveling.

It's incredible. Now I'm a sucker for a fancy truck as much as the next guy. I can sit here and tell you about the latest Unimog-based RV that will take your family of 11 through the world and can drive through five-foot-deep mud and up to the top of Kilimanjaro.

I think that stuff is as cool as anyone else. I love to sit and look at videos of Land Rovers and Land Cruisers and they got all of their bumpers and winches and lights. I like that stuff as much as anyone else. But I can't help but notice how much time and how much money and how much energy people spend buying stuff to bolt onto their car ostensibly for the purpose of going traveling and how little time they actually spend on the road.

Now here's what's even more interesting to me. Every place I've been around the world and there are a lot of countries I haven't been to but I've traveled in some quite varied countries. Everywhere from the large countries of Europe, Germany and England and Scotland and Austria and all these places, Italy.

I've also traveled a little bit in Egypt and in Haiti and in South America, excuse me, in Colombia, yeah, that's South America. Also in Nicaragua or Guatemala and where else? A bunch of other places like that. And the thing that I have noticed is that in those places that I have been, even if whether you're on the beach in Costa Rica or out in the middle of the jungle, almost nobody owns a big fancy four-wheel drive vehicle.

But I don't know about those of you who live elsewhere in the world but just about everyone who thinks they're going to travel in the United States goes out and they got to buy a big fancy four by four. But when you actually go to the places that many people want to go to, you find that some guy is driving his little two-door beat-up Toyota Tercel down a rutted back road and parking it on the beach.

And then when it gets stuck and the tide's coming in, you just get six or seven guys and they put a shoulder into the back of the car and they push it away again. It's not that big a deal. You don't need a $2,000 winch and a $1,000 custom bumper for your car.

Now, I'm picking on something that is – again, like I said, it's something that I like but I think it's a good illustration. Is your goal to have a big fancy vehicle that seems impressive to everybody or is your goal to have a big fancy vehicle that is something that you really like?

I'm not diminishing that. I think it's fine to have stuff you like. Or is your goal to travel? Because if your goal is to travel, all you got to do is get in your car, turn the key and drive. You can drive down to Walmart and toss a $150 tent in the back trunk and toss a Coleman stove back there and a little sleeping pad if you want to get luxurious and go.

It doesn't cost that much. Just get out there and go. But see, that would involve overcoming the fear of actually going and that would involve actually doing something about your dreams and doing something about your goals instead of sitting around writing on the internet about the next little doodad that you want to buy for your car.

Now, in fairness, I recognize that there are some people for whom their most enjoyable travel is to be able to go and drive through the middle of the swamp. Fine. Go for it. But for the majority of people, I think, "Wow, that's not so much. I mean you never put the thing in four-wheel drive and you just take what you have." So my point is don't confuse your goals.

If your goal is to have the latest, greatest land cruiser with all of the associated farcle that makes it beautiful, fine. Go for it. But if your goal is to go to Mexico, get some time off, quit your job, take a couple thousand bucks out of the bank and go to Mexico.

You can skip this whole hassle of spending months and months and months getting a bunch of stuff ready that you never need. And if your goal is to travel, you don't have a car, well, take a bicycle. If you don't have a bicycle, go for a walk. Wasn't that long ago that traveling meant taking a walk and you can still do that.

Now, again, I don't necessarily want to go travel that way. But if I were broke and single and I'm looking around and saying, "Man, I'm in need of an adventure," I might just go and take a walk. And you can have some beautiful, amazing experiences when you're walking across the country for a year.

And it doesn't cost as much as buying a $100,000 RV to RV across the country. Again, filter this through what you actually want. If you want to travel in a certain lifestyle, fine. But many of you don't. But yet many of you are sitting around thinking, "Oh, I want this fancy gear." And the reality is just go.

Don't waste the time. Just go accomplish the goal. Two other examples that come to mind is something like a house. Many people have a dream of a big fancy house. And I think that's great. I live in a world of fancy houses. And sometimes I'll be over at a friend's house and I'll be and I look around and say, "Man, my house is not so fancy.

I don't have a beautiful pool with a swim up, not a lanai, a swim up bar where I can serve drinks over the swim up bar and they can sit on the little pools in the bar. I don't have that. I don't have a 65-inch grill with 16 burners so I can cook 200 hamburgers at a time.

I don't have that." But the question is, do I really need or want to own that kind of house? Do I really need or want the swim up pool? Or is my actual goal having the ability to have a good time with my friends, be able to entertain them, be able to have some kind of forum in which I can spend time with the people that I care about?

Now, if you've got the money and have the fancy house, use it. And if you like to entertain in the pool and so therefore it's worth the money to you, awesome. But if you figure out that really what you want is just the ability to entertain some friends, don't wait until you can spend an extra $200,000 on a house that has a pool with a swim up bar.

Get a cooler, find a cool spot down by the beach, stuff the cooler full of beer, go buy yourself a big fancy $200 grill and drag it down to the beach and make a destination out of it. Set up a water slide on the hill, an adult water slide, or do something unique that's going to allow you to create the experience.

And you can entertain just as beautifully in a public park with a little bit of thought and a little bit of creativity as you can with a $200,000 pool. Think about it. I guess the only other example that I'll mention here is the dead horse that I beat over and over on the show.

This show is dedicated to helping you build financial independence for you, for yourself and for your family. But I think so much of the time, especially in this early retirement financial independence community of which I'm a part, a lot of the time we're focusing on things that aren't an actual goal.

Yes, I want to be financially independent and I want to be financially independent in a basis where my investments are able to provide for my lifestyle. But that's a farther down the road goal. And for many of you, that's also a farther down the road goal. My actual goals are simply autonomy.

The ability to decide from day to day based upon all of my goals, my life on an integrated basis. My actual goals are just to be able to do what I feel I need to do on each individual day without somebody saying you need to be here at 8 o'clock in the morning.

So once I identified that, it's much simpler to go the path of entrepreneurship and create a business that I want to own than it is to save a million dollars. It's much simpler to, if you recognize that what you actually want is to get out of a job that you hate and go to a job that you love, much simpler to do that than to save a million dollars.

If you find out that, well, we actually just don't like living in the South where it's hot, well, go get a job at a bike shop in Boulder, Colorado, or move to New York and start a plumbing business. Or if you find out you're tired of the snow, move down and do something interesting.

And it doesn't even have to be anything exotic, but just do something interesting in another place. A 40-hour a week job as a librarian or as a coffee shop owner in a place that you like to be, for many of you, is all that you want or need for financial independence.

Now, you'll have to figure out how to apply these ideas and concepts to your life. And my challenge for you is ask yourself the questions, "What do I want?" And the follow-up question is, "Why? Why is that important to me?" There's a useful technique sometimes used in coaching or in counseling.

You can use it for yourself to coach and counsel yourself. But the technique is simply to ask yourself three follow-up questions. "What do I want?" And let me go through a chain as an example. I want to buy a bigger house. That's what I want. Okay. Why? Well, I feel like my house is overflowing at the seams.

I've got stuff everywhere and I can't get through the hallway because there's stuff stacked on every side. Okay. So what you actually want is a cleaner house. Why? Well, I'm really frustrated at the fact that I spend all my time cleaning and moving stuff here and there rather than enjoying my Saturdays.

Okay. So what you actually want is to be able to enjoy your Saturdays. Why? Well, I really hate what I do during the week and so Saturday is the only time that I have. So when I work this job I don't like and then I come home and then I have to spend all my time moving and sorting my stuff then I feel frustrated with that.

Ah, okay. So my example breaks down. I should have come up with a better one but hopefully you see it might be in this case that the goal is not actually a bigger fancier house but the goal is actually to make that job change over a period of time and to throw away some stuff.

And it might be that the house that you have is perfectly adequate for what you need and want and those other changes which are simpler to make and cheaper and easier will help you to get closer to the lifestyle that you imagine. So my challenge to you is ask yourself those questions.

Take your list of goals and ask yourself why. Why? Why do I want that? Just make sure that you're clear on the reasons and if you want to own one of those beautiful, beautiful earth roamers, big fancy RVs, four-wheel drive, you can drive, I mean big expedition vehicles, go for it.

But if in reality what you want to do is toss a hundred dollar tent to the back of the car and actually spend more time on the road, if that's what you actually want then go for that. And I wish you good luck and good success on your planning.

Shut the show off. I'm out of here. I got to go back and love my family but I'm out of here for today. Shut the show off and spend some time thinking about that for today and I'll be back with you soon. Sweet Hop is an online marketplace curating the best in premium seating at stadiums, arenas, and amphitheaters nationwide.

With Sweet Hop's 100% ticket guarantee, no hidden fees, and the personal high-level service you expect with a premium purchase, you can relax knowing you'll receive the luxury experience you deserve. Visit sweethop.com today to book your premium tickets to your favorite teams, artists, and all the must-see live events to Sweet Hop Around LA.

S-U-I-T-E-H-O-P dot com. It's more than just a ticket.