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We have one question, one caller. We spent 45 minutes or an hour just talking about the one question. It was a rich conversation on a difficult topic, which is how can husbands and wives handle their money together better? Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast. My name is Joshua Sheets and I'm your host, your guide, your Sherpa, hopefully your friend.

Living a rich life now while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less. Today is pretty much all about the rich life because I'll tell you what, there's riches and there's quality of life and hopefully today we're going to dig into quality of life and talk about things that matter.

On Fridays I do these Q&A shows and I really love doing these. I'll tell you in a moment kind of, I'll do it now. I'll tell you why I started doing these shows. This Q&A show was an idea for me. One of the things I wanted to do was to streamline.

I wanted to do more Q&A because I love doing Q&A, but I also wanted to streamline the production of it. So the first thing I wanted to do is I said, how can I do it and do it in an interactive way? Being a podcaster is a great thing, but it's also can be a lonely thing because it's just you talking into a mic.

You don't get the feedback that you get speaking to a crowd. If you've never recorded a show, I encourage you to do it, but it's a strange situation because you got to speak, but you don't get the feedback from a crowd. Usually when you're giving a speech, you get eyes and you can see is the crowd receiving this?

Is it not? After you've spoken for a while, you get to be pretty receptive as to the mood of the crowd. Well, podcasting is not like that. So I always like to get that interaction, but usually it comes not posthumously, it comes post, I don't know, after the show.

That's when I get the reaction in the comments. By then it's too late. I can't do anything about it. So I thought it'd be fun to do a little live Q&A and have some interaction. The other reason I started to do this was as part of my own plan of preparation for possibly going to broadcast radio in the future.

The end of 2015, I spent a lot of time wrestling with whether I wanted to take the show to the radio waves and ultimately decided the timing wasn't right if I ever do choose to do it. But the other thing I wasn't so confident is my skills. I wanted to improve my skills.

I said, "How can I bring some of that live dynamic?" Well, I'll do a live Q&A call, which is what these Friday shows are now scheduled to be. And it's been fun. It's also been challenging because it requires me just to show up and speak on my feet. And I'll tell you, I might, especially today, you'll hear me hem and haw a little bit.

I might seem like Mr. Confident or Mr. Brash or Provocative, but I'm really not. I'm kind of an introvert, but I'm willing to do it. I've made the commitment when I started the show. I'll just try to be clear and give the best answer as I can. So today was fun.

I showed up to the call and there was one person on the call, one person listening in and one person there listening, there with a question. And so this entire Q&A call is just one conversation with a listener named Erica. And I think it was really good. It was really rich.

It was unusual. And I wasn't expecting to talk about the things that we talked about, but I hope you enjoy and appreciate it. I'll play that interview for you. I'll play that call for you in just a moment. And just a tiny bit of preamble to the call. I hope you enjoy it.

Some of you who, if you don't like it when I talk about my own perspectives, convictions with regard to religious conviction, this will be a show you'll want to skip because that's, especially at the front end, it's heavy on that. That was the question that I was asked. And so that was the question that I answered.

So if you're not into that, please don't just comment about why you hate that. Just skip the show. Come back another day. But if you're willing to listen to that and listen to my own convictions, my own perspective, I do my best to share with you why I believe what I believe and why I do what I do.

And I think there's some rich content here for many of you. And I hope you enjoy it. Erica was a wonderful lady to talk to. And she asked a great question. I try to record these shows usually with a start to finish. I hit record and then bring the callers on the line.

I like that. It makes it smoother for me in the production. But today I didn't know if more people would call in. And so I just, I'm recording the intro now after I just hung up the phone with Erica. So that's going to be the call. Before I play the call for you, I won't come back at the end and do announcements.

I'll just go ahead and do it here. This is a benefit. These calls are a benefit for patrons. And I would encourage you, if you would like to talk with me and discuss your question, your comment, get my answer. It can be technical, it can be my opinion. That's up to you.

But I'll answer anything you want. I'll show up and I'll just talk with you on these calls. That's exactly what they are. And I'll give, I try to give everyone a chance to do it. I try to sense the flow of the time to commit to it. I'm learning with those things.

But I'd love for you to be involved in that. Frankly, if you want to get my opinion on something, this is going to be your best way to do it. I get tons of emails. And thank you to those of you who've been resending your emails. I love getting emails.

And as I said in a recent standalone episode, I respond to every email. But a lot of times my response is simply, "Hey, thank you for the question. I've added it to my Q&A queue. I keep a list of all of your questions and that way I have ideas to go to and answer questions sometimes." That's often a response.

More often a response is, "Hey, I just can't address this in email. I'm sorry. But here are a couple things to consider and I just give a quick answer." But I get too many in-depth questions for me to be able to guarantee you your spot. But the way I'm doing these Q&A calls, you got a really good chance.

So if you sign up to become a patron at the appropriate level, details on that at RadicalPersonalFinance.com/patron, you will get access to the time and the phone number for the call. You'll be able to call in and ask me your question. And I would love it if more of you were to do that.

So check it out, RadicalPersonalFinance.com/patron. Now let's get to it. So we're here on the Q&A call and at the moment, we have exactly one participant. So for other listeners who want to join us in these Q&A, we've got a massive room open for you. So if you'd like to have a discussion, we've got one person hanging on the line to ask a question.

And Erica, that means that we get as much time as you want to talk about anything that you want. You got—this is a high—hopefully a high—if I can say something intelligent, this is hopefully a high beneficial consulting call for you. You don't have to pay anything more than what you're already paying as a patron.

And I'll give you as much time as we can. So welcome to the Friday Q&A call. How can I serve you today? Thank you so much, Joshua. Thank you for having this Q&A call for us. And I feel very lucky to be the one to get all of your time today.

I listened to the Q&A call last week and I was really interested by the Q&A—the question about the roles of finances in a family between a husband and a wife. I have an economics degree, architecture minor, and I've been working in finance for about 10 years as an analyst and as a trader and that sort of thing.

So I'm very up to date in investments and that sort of thing. And I'm working on my—on the actual money management, thanks to YNAB, because you turned me on to that late last year. My husband works in a corporate job and brings in pretty good income, enough where it should be more of an issue of allocation and use for us than trying to bring in more.

But given my background, I have a hard time not wanting to earn money for the family, even though we have two young kids that we intend to homeschool. And basically, the question last week opened up a big, big question in my mind as to whether that set of roles and my feeling of a need to provide as well since I'm allocating the money we have, if that might be why I'm so hung up and why I'm still freelancing.

Yeah, so that question caught me out of the blue last week, and I'm trying to keep these Q&A calls—I mean, it's just me, so this is just a conversation between a couple of people. But it's—I mean, frankly, I don't love to talk about—I don't love to be in the public eye, and I don't love to have my opinions criticized and dealt with.

And that's what's challenging for me and why I kind of approached the topic gingerly. And I went ahead and shared what our perspective was. And I'm going to give you a straight answer, but I got to give a little bit of preamble in order to make myself feel better about it.

But the answer that I gave was talking about the role of—what is my role in our family versus my wife's role in our family finances. And it's something that we've changed on over the years, and it's something that directly confronts biblical Christianity. And it's probably—it's uncomfortable for me to talk about in a public forum because it confronts so many of the arguments that go on in our culture.

It's the popular culture, and you've got to trace it through gender relations throughout the last—I don't know, I guess since time immemorial. I mean, there's always had to deal with it. And in our country and in our culture, this is like the massive press of culture around with—it started back in the '60s and '70s with the major revolution, the feminist revolution that dramatically changed gender roles.

And fast forward, even to today, we see with the role of marriage, the role of now gender identity is the major theme that's in the news. I mean, you can't pick up a newspaper without seeing an article at it. And so, I also feel a lack of personal—a lack of real confidence because I'm a young husband.

I've been married for four years, four or five years, something like that now. January 1, 2012, do the math, that's how long we've been married. And so, you've had to learn as a new spouse, as a new couple, we've had to learn over the years and try different things.

So, I'll just tell you kind of my perspective on it and where I've grown to, but with those caveats of recognizing I'm a young husband and I don't love to talk publicly, so it's just a conversation between friends, obviously, with other people listening. Just for me to understand, though, are you guys Christians?

We are. He was raised Catholic. I was raised—Mom sent me to Sunday school so I'd be exposed. I wasn't exposed enough, so I actually just ordered a copy of the Geneva Bible, and so I'm reading that one now, just to build a stronger foundation as opposed to sort of the hodgepodge that I have.

Right. But it's more an issue that I'd like to sort of talk through some of the issues, because you exposed the question as to whether it's that feeling that feminism has given me that I need to contribute financially more than anything that's driving this feeling that maybe I'm not enough if I'm simply managing my family and perhaps also helping on the financial side.

Right. I know it seems that in your family, especially being a financial planner, and with all the background that you have, it also seems to suit your strengths to have you do all of that management as well. And I wonder if you have a perspective—I know this is just your thought and just what you have, but I know a lot of us are sort of floundering in this idea of how do we recreate what we do, whether it's within the scheme of what has historically been done with what's been presented to us or figuring out what works for us.

So I welcome a conversation. Right, absolutely. So I'll begin with my presupposition. So my presupposition is that, based upon external evidence and also based upon my own personal conviction—so the external evidence is a discussion where you have to prove the authenticity and authority of the Bible. That's a long-winded conversation as far as different perspectives.

Much of history, the general challenge and struggle between worldviews has been, do we base our systems and our actions and our behaviors on a biblical framework or do we base them on something else, some other creation? And Western society was founded upon a direct approach of saying, "We're going to implement and live under the authority of biblical scripture and biblical precept and concept." That's been the foundation of Western society.

That's changing now. We're moving into a much more secular society and that has different skirmishes on the edges where things are changing. I choose to believe the Bible and I choose to place the Bible as the highest authority for the way that I act. So I look then to say, "Does the Bible have a clear teaching or does it have principles that I can draw from that will be applicable to my modern life?" There are various reasons why I choose that.

I won't go into it here, but I'll say the best, most concise summary of it that I've ever heard verbalized and that you may find particularly valuable. There's a preacher that I like, his name is Vodie Bauckham and he has a, I'll look it up and include it in the show notes, but he has an interesting speech that he made, I believe it was on a college campus, but it was just entitled, "Why I Choose to Believe the Bible." And from scripture, he draws this statement.

He says, "I choose to believe the Bible because it's a reliable collection of historical documents written by eyewitnesses during the lifetime of other eyewitnesses. They report supernatural events which happened in fulfillment of specific prophecy and they claim to be divine rather than human in origin." So, that's the verbatim quote of what he teaches and he unpacks that in a sermon.

I don't think it's directly related to finance, but for anyone who's interested in that topic, I would encourage it as a good, useful place to start. And for you, as you're considering, what do I believe and why do I believe it, that's where I go to. So, in the Bible, the Bible teaches, clearly talks about gender roles and on biblical authority, you see that husbands and wives are brought together as one and they have different functions in the family.

And when looked at specifically, there is not the major question in our modern age is, does that mean that one is more valuable or less valuable? In the Bible, women and men are equally valuable and so, that's the first major hurdle that people have to face is, does the Bible teach that men and women are differently of value?

Historically, it's interesting, if you look at Jewish culture, you find actually an esteem of women that was far above many of the historical cultures. So, you have to balance, are men and women equally valuable? Yes. Are they different in function? And in that regard, the Bible teaches very clearly that men and women are different in function.

And so, I wasn't prepared to do a Bible study with chapter and verse today, but that's something for another day. But specifically, what it teaches is that the man has the responsibility for providing for the family and the wife has the primary responsibility for providing within the home. That's a scriptural teaching and there are various verses that could be referenced about that.

So, what you see clearly is you see an authority and a responsibility that's placed upon the husband. So, when I said last week that I said that it's my responsibility, that ultimately, I'm the one who bears all of the responsibility. And for me to place any of the responsibility onto my wife to provide for our income, to provide for the care and protection of our family, that would be an abdication of my responsibility.

So, I take full responsibility for all of those aspects. My wife's major responsibility and her major calling is to function within our family. And that is more valuable with the children and in our family to keep our home operating at peak perfection. So, there's a division of responsibility there.

What happens is that if I place a responsibility on her to where she's got to function effectively in the home and outside of the home, it causes a very difficult stretching. It causes something...something's got to be ignored in that situation. Now, I don't think these lines are cut and dry in this sense.

As a father, I am responsible for what's happening in my home. So, my heart has been over the years, I desire to be present in my home. And I usually like to start, if I were going to preach on the subject in another forum other than Radical Personal Finance, I always start with the men.

And I generally speak more strongly to men than I do to women because it's our responsibility to lead. So, as an example, I don't maintain activities that are going to take me out of the home during my family time. I don't maintain hobbies. I don't maintain activities that are my thing.

I don't golf. I don't go fishing. It's not a rule that I can't do it. But on an ongoing basis, my heart is for my home and for my children. And that's my number one calling in life is first to labor in my house. It's not to be rich.

It's not to become wealthy. My number one calling in life is to labor within my family and to raise my children. Now, I'm going to integrate them into other things and I want to live a life that's fully integrated. But my calling is at home, is to be there and to serve my family.

I'm also responsible for going out from the house to the world and that's where I'm also responsible to go and earn an income. I'm responsible to support the family. But I try to do that always with the vision of being as involved in my family's lifestyle as possible. So, that's why I've worked hard to build the work that I do now.

As we record this call, I'm sitting in what technically is a third bedroom in my house and my kids are napping. My wife is in the other room right before I came in and hit record and fired up the call. I kissed them good to go and have a nap.

So, that's the type of lifestyle I'm trying to build that's integrative. But if there's a direction, a change of direction, then my calling is to do the work that's required outside of the home and my wife's calling is to do the work that's inside the home. Now, that's – we accept that based upon a submission to biblical authority and to God.

When I became a Christian, many people, I believe, misperceive becoming a Christian as something that's – it's just a decision that, "Okay, this is true." When I became a Christian, I became a slave of Christ. And so, that's that fundamental basis of authority and it's always on that basis of my submission to God's authority in my life that I even have the right or responsibility to exercise authority in my family.

Moving on to practical expression of it. The biggest practical expression that I identified with – that I was speaking on last week was simply that what I – the challenge that my wife and I faced is that we have been raised in a gender-neutralized society and both of us have been raised in that context.

And because of that, I generally have always wanted to run away. I never want to push anything on my wife. I never want to indicate any gender differences. Many ways we've been – I feel like I've been neutered by modern society and finding that proper expression of masculinity and femininity is a challenge.

She was raised as wanting to contribute and wanting to contribute financially. And so, when she was – she actually came into our marriage – my wife is an amazing manager of money. I had made – prior to our marriage, I had made some boneheaded business decisions which haunted me for years.

I had to work very hard to overcome them. Specifically, I let my business get out of whack and let my expenses of my business vastly exceed what they should have been and it resulted in my burning a lot of money that I had saved. And so, when we actually came into our marriage relationship, she came in with more money in her pocket than I did which was really, really frustrating to me because I thought, "Well, I'm supposed to be this great top-notch financial guy.

I've been studying personal finance for a really long time and I'm supposed to be rich." And I had lost a bunch of money on some bad investments. I wound up completely – anyway, I lost money and it was a painful experience to me. And then in paying for the aspects of buying engagement rings and those normal marriage expenses and setting up honeymoons and all of that, I spent a majority of the liquid cash that I had.

And I – so it was really humbling that I thought I was Mr. Big Shot Financial Guy and I wound up being the broke one. And she came in and she had been diligently saving. She never made a lot of money but she'd always been very careful with her expenses and she'd been diligently saving.

And so we approached it in the beginning of trying to say, "Well, we should – both of us should – we should do everything equally." And that was what I was taught is that we should do everything equally. We should sit down and one of us, whoever is more financially proficient, should run the budget.

One of us who's more technically capable should be the one to keep the checkbook and all of those things. That was how we started. But what I found was that if I needed to make – let's say I needed to make a business decision or if she needed to make a decision with something in the household that was under her jurisdiction, then we found that there was a tension there.

And if – and it did her – and it didn't do a lot of good especially once she came home when we had our first baby – right before we had our first baby. It doesn't do her any good to say, "We got to make more money. We're getting broke.

We got to make more money," when she's taking care of a baby. How is it going to work where if she's going to have to take the responsibility of the stress of saying, "We don't have a lot of money," and then – but she is not free because of her duties with the little baby who needs her all day long if she's not free to go and do the work.

That was what the reality was in that book that I referenced, Man of Steel and Velvet, where the author of that book is really the only place I've ever read it, where he pointed out that when you take responsibility, you also have to take authority. You can't delegate – you can't ask someone to bear a burden without also giving them the authority to do it.

And so once that came down and we realized the stress that it was causing for her to have this divided attention and she would be frustrated, which it's possible. I mean I don't know anything about your financial situation. But what I see so many of my friends doing is they put the stress on their wife and they don't take the responsibility.

And one of the things that's always puzzled me as I've searched and looked at the scripture and tried to figure out like how do you apply this in a modern way, the thing that's often puzzled me is it seems to me, based upon personal experience, that women are naturally more capable than men.

My wife is, I believe, she just seems much more capable than men. From the earliest age, girls seem to mature faster than boys. And so she's more technically competent, she's in some ways more rational, she's more thoughtful, she has a better ability to control her urges and her impulses.

And so I think, "God, it doesn't make any sense. Why on earth would you tell me to be responsible and her to work with me in that? Why don't I just put it onto her?" But what I also see is that I see that men, we don't want the responsibility.

And this is the best I've come up with at this point, is that the reason that God places the responsibility on men is because it touches that thing that we don't want to touch. Men find it easy to run away from their families, to run away to their golf game, find it easy to say, "I'll just dump it on my wife.

Here, honey, here's the paycheck. Now I'm going to go do my thing." And so by me being responsible, it forces me to confront the reality of the situation that I'm in. So I don't – so those are the principles. When it comes to actual application, that's about where I would stop in terms of giving advice to people because I don't see – I don't draw from those principles a specific rule.

I would not go to somebody and say, "You can't do part-time work." I think if I were to say that, that would be anti-biblical. So for example, the scripture, the reference there is that's often referenced, Proverbs 31 is an amazing account of what the Bible holds out as the ideal woman.

And the ideal woman is a woman of business. And so you ask yourself, how does this – how is this applied? It's not from the – I would – I personally would not at this point in my understanding, I would not apply it in terms of a rule of saying, "No, you shouldn't do a business or you shouldn't use this skill that you have or you shouldn't use this ability that you have." I don't have any rule associated with it.

What I would – how I would apply it is if I met your husband or any husband that was a Christian, if I found out that they were placing a responsibility on their spouse to support the family financially, and if that responsibility to support the family financially is interfering with the ability to love your children, to love the family, I would believe – I believe that would be a problem.

And that's where I would privately, if the person were open, I would privately encourage them, "Listen, you need to do this." I believe that for the sake of my children, and I've seen this worked out and my wife and I were talking, because after last week's show, I said, "Oh man, I just – I opened up a can of worms." I didn't necessarily intend to get into that.

It's hard for me to talk about some of those private things. I'm not used to it. And I went and we were talking about it all again and I said, "Are you happier? Do you feel happier?" And she said, "Absolutely. It's better." And when I – I'm going to bring what I'm saying to a close here just with – for me and for us, I believe it would be a better result in our family.

If I didn't have earning capacity, I believe it would be a better result in our family for me to go and get two jobs if I had to, and for my wife to be caring and pouring into the lives of our kids. I believe that would be what I would – what we would choose to do rather than to say, "Okay, we both got to go and work." Now, thankfully, I also believe there are options.

For example, if we would move into a smaller apartment, we would move into a cheaper lifestyle before we would force her to go and earn income. And the challenge that I've had is trying to sort it through. Just this morning, I was reading a book by Mary Eberstadt. I think I may have mentioned it before, but the book was called Adam and Eve After the Pill, The Paradoxes of the Sexual Revolution.

And what's interesting to me is to go through, because there's such a political orientation for people trying to promote an agenda, I've been interested to go through and try to read what is some of the research on children, the presence of a father, the presence of a mother. And it's always difficult to filter through the political agenda as compared to the actual facts, the sociological health of the family and of the children.

So I'll shut up now, Erica, and just let you respond and ask further questions. Was that anything like what you were thinking about, asking about? Absolutely. And I actually have a little bit more dialogue with that. But what I find so helpful for this as a woman and as a wife is it's really hard to get into your own husband's head, because they feel certain obligations to not put a burden on you by saying that, "I'd rather have you home," and not working, because the man might feel that then they're telling the wife that they can't work outside of the house.

And it just gets, when you're so deep in a relationship, sometimes it's hard to know how much you're trying to satisfy and please the other person's needs versus what you actually want and what you need out of a relationship. So I really appreciate seeing a strong husband's perspective on this as well and hearing from your wife.

Looking to all of that, too, it's actually funny, because Proverbs was the first one that I read when I got the New Geneva Bible, and I actually saw Proverbs 31 as the man has gathered and hunted, and then within the household, the woman has then made the most of it.

And I actually saw that as more the role of the woman helping within the household, as opposed to going out and doing business deals that are outside of the family's business. So I find it interesting that you see that as more supportive of the working outside of the home.

But there's a million and one different interpretations. Let me respond to that real quick, or to both of those things, because they're both valuable things. And I want to just make a note of the question that you were going to go on with. First, as far as the men, what you identified as far as husbands saying to their wives, I see this as it's a real challenge in our culture, and that's what I talked about in many ways being feeling neutered.

I personally have a real burden for men. And burden, I use that term, that's a Christian-ese term, but meaning I feel a calling, a responsibility, a desire, a goal, a burden. It's not a negative thing when I say a burden. It means like it's something that's just on my heart.

It's one of those things that's important to me. And so that's why I started my other show, Encouraging Christian Fathers. And frankly, in many ways, I don't particularly desire to speak to women in the sense that I believe that if men would stand up and if they would lead and if they would be worthy of respect, that's the primary responsibility.

I don't believe it's my responsibility to go and tell a lot of other people, especially – I don't believe it's my responsibility to go out and try to preach to women. I find that the men are generally the problem, and so I want to speak to men. And what you identified, though, is exactly kind of when I shared last week, I shared the story of my friend and I said, "This is the same thing that is happening." And I have seen this continually in close relationships, people who I care about.

And as a product of the feminist revolution, as a product of – let's just stick with that – we as men have been raised and trained to be respectful and careful and not to exclude women. And so what happens now is instead of a man being willing to lovingly say to his wife, "Listen, honey, you don't have to work," we always have to say, "You don't have to work unless you want to, and I want to make sure that you have everything that's there." Now, I don't know how to solve that problem.

All I know is that in the context of a loving relationship with personal communication between husbands and wives, as they continue to communicate, if I encourage men to serve and to love their wives, I believe that the women will respond and they'll be able to work it out as communication skills grow.

But you're exactly right with your analysis, is that even to this day, I personally am very, very careful of the demands that I place upon my wife, and I'm very, very cautious. Now, I think that's a right thing to do. Love is always with caution. As I said, I hope clearly last week, I'm not making a major financial decision without my wife.

I'm not going to do it because she's there as knowing me, and she's a wise source of counsel. So I'm not going to make a major decision. I'm not going to say, "I'm going to go and do this thing here," unless she's on board with that because that's part of my safety net.

But if something goes wrong, I'm not blaming her. It's my fault. So you identified the issue. With regard to Proverbs 31, it is an interesting passage and I'm not prepared at the moment to do a full exegesis to use Christianese words of like, pull it all out. I think it's true and I guess the biggest thing that you see in Proverbs 31 is you see that it is one scripture passage from which you can draw the principle that the woman is a homemaker, she's focused on her home and her husband is known in the gates.

And when both of those roles are fully committed to and fully appreciated, it leads to incredible results. It would not be possible for me to build radical personal finance. It would not be possible for me to fulfill my calling of the things that I'm called to do if my wife were not fully on board with it and if I didn't have the confidence that my home was well taken care of.

And so it's a valid point. I'll have to go back and take a look again. I haven't read that scripture in a while. Go ahead with your next question and response, please. I guess that in response, when you were talking about your wife feeling better when she wasn't stretched so thin to so many areas, I personally stretch myself in so many areas that that's why I feel like it's hard to do anything to the standards that I require.

My house isn't how it should be for either myself or for my husband or for our two kids. As a man building a business, you think it really helps to have the whole house under control? And that makes you feel less concerned? Without question. And one of the concepts that I think is so powerful is many times people feel in our modern culture, we've accepted the idea that being a father or being a mother is somehow less valuable than other functions and other work in society.

And so as I always prefer to do, I'll speak to fathers. If my job or my business is conflicting with my family, I will not do it no matter what. There is not a job opportunity in the world that if it conflicts with my family and causes me to not have to do it, I won't take it.

Best example, I always wanted to be a truck driver. I always thought it would be so fun to be a truck driver. There's not a chance in the world that I would be a truck driver with having a wife and kids. I'd be on the road 13 days out of 14, home for one night every two weeks or a couple nights every few weeks, calling home every night for an hour.

That's simply not going to work. I would rather in my order of priorities, I believe and I would counsel men who are in the situation. I'm not saying that – there's lots of men who are stuck in this situation, but I would rather that we live in a very humble house and we don't have a car and I take whatever job I'm suited for that has me home in the evening and during the night and during the day.

I fear right now as we record this, we're in the middle of a political election season. I would never even consider running for a political – I wouldn't really consider running for a political office, but I wouldn't even consider running for political office when I had young children because if you think about the plight of a politician when they have young children, you're going to miss five years, ten years of your child's life.

For me, that's a categorical no. Being president of the United States is not nearly as important as loving and serving my children. I love and serve my children, but I would never consider running for the presidency of the United States. I would never consider running for the presidency of the United States.

I would never consider running for the presidency of the United States. I would never consider running for the presidency of the United States. I would never consider running for the presidency of the United States. I would never consider running for the presidency of the United States. I would never consider running for the presidency of the United States.

I would never consider running for the presidency of the United States. I would never consider running for the presidency of the United States. I would never consider running for the presidency of the United States. I would never consider running for the presidency of the United States. I would never consider running for the presidency of the United States.

I would never consider running for the presidency of the United States. I would never consider running for the presidency of the United States. That is my first and foremost responsibility and calling. And that's job number one. And you can't offer me a job that's gonna hinder that and expect me to take it.

Money is not my determinant of success. And again, this is based very clearly on biblical teaching. First, just two biblical passages. One, Paul says, "What is a profit of man "if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?" So I never place money and finance and business at the top of my scale.

Number two, even a subset of that, what is a profit of man if he gains the whole world and loses his family? And so here's where in ministry, every single one of my credentials for ministry, for being able to be involved and respected in the working of the church is based upon my family.

And it's based upon my character. It's not based upon how much money I have. The only scriptural qualifications regarding money is that I'm a generous giver and that I'm able to support my family. Those are the only qualifications. But there's no dollar figure, there's no relative wealth scale attached to that.

But if my household is not under authority, if my household is not functioning, if my wife is not loved, if my children are rebellious, then I'm completely disqualified from everything else. So for fathers first, those are all of my responsibilities. And the same thing is true for mothers. And so what I have a heart for is that we've lost so much the ability to conceive of being a father or a mother in even a professional capacity.

So you used to take classes on home economics, you used to take classes on things of family. Today, all of that has been traded for a career orientation. But like my wife, when I look at what she's able to do, I'm amazed at what she's able to do with our children.

I mean, she does preschool with my son. My son is two and a half years old and she's able to sit down with him. We spent hours reading with him, doing preschool with him. At two and a half years old, we were looking at a book that's called "What Your Child Should Know in Kindergartener." And my son, at this point, two and a half, can, I can't, let me be careful 'cause I don't wanna oversell it.

But he's able to do many of the things that a kindergartner should be able to do. He knows all his colors, he knows his shapes, he knows all of the sounds of his A through Z. We haven't really done the song, but we went with, to teach him to read, we went with the sounds first instead of the letters.

He can count, I think he's up to 17 now. We skipped one to 10 and we just said, we're gonna teach you one to 100. So he loves to count, he loves to sing. Like, all of these things that she can do, but those are all so time consuming.

And then the little character things. So, sitting down and teaching, you know, for him, teaching my son, teaching Sterling, saying, okay, time to put away toys. Well, when he was one and a half and it was time to put away toys, it was about a 35 minute process. And I don't, he doesn't wanna do it.

Well, he wants, okay. So, for her, at that point, even before my daughter was able to be built, there was one time where she sat on the floor with him, patiently, working with him, until he was able to put away his toys. That's not possible if you don't have the time.

Now, I look at that and I look at the character that's being sown in his life, by her presence in his life. And I look at the discipline of his self-discipline, his ability to control his emotions, ability to follow through on a task. And I fast forward that and I say, where is he gonna be at 30 years old?

I would not be, and I always, I hate to sound arrogant, but I have to be accurate. So, please recognize this with a spirit of humility. But I would not be the man I am without the love and care of my parents. Most importantly, in different ways, but especially in those early years of my mom.

And there were those years of her pouring into me and her holding me accountable. And those things, when you study childhood development, you see how in the first few years of a child's life, that completely transforms the course of a child's life. And so, when I look at investments, and we talk to my wife sometimes, I talk about all the things that are going on with the show.

And we talk about it and I say, you know what? Comparatively speaking, let's say that you go get a job outside the house and you're earning income. That would be what our society would respect on a broader basis. What do you do? Oh, I'm an advertising executive or whatever.

That would be what our society would respect. But what are we gonna do with the money? Okay, we're gonna pay a bunch of money in taxes, and we're gonna save some money and put it in a retirement account. How much, it's also, however, what about this? Let's sow into our kids so that they don't need us, so they're not boomerang children, regressing into our home as a spoiled brat, 25-year-old boy who has never learned how to be a man.

Let's teach him how to be a man, and then we don't have to incur that financial expense of supporting our boomerang child for 11 years. Or let's sow into our children a relationship. Where, like, to this day, if my parents had any financial need whatsoever, I would, in a second, and someday I hope to do this, they're at a stage of life where they are enjoying their independence, but someday I hope they will come and live with my family and live with our other children.

And it's not from a begrudging, oh, I've gotta do it for my parents. It's because of the relationship that's sown and that's built that I have this relationship with them where I want them to be involved in my life. That wouldn't have happened if my dad were off conquering political campaigns and my mom were off earning lots of money.

Last week, I took a road trip with my dad, and he goes to some of my conferences with me now. His work schedule now is very flexible. And he goes to some of my conferences. The only reason he comes is so that we can ride in the car and talk together.

And so last year, we went to Texas together, and I think we played one hour of audio the whole trip, there and three hours or so back. The rest of the time, we were talking. We went up to Tennessee. We played about two hours of something to listen to, and the rest of the 24 hours together in the car, we were talking.

And so that type of relationship doesn't come by accident. That type of relationship with my children is not gonna come if I'm out earning lots of money and it only comes with intention. And so I consider myself first and foremost a professional father, and my wife is first and foremost a professional mother.

And we make decisions within that context that are gonna allow us, I hope, and I pray, and I trust, and it's my confidence that are gonna allow us to build the type of family that we wanna have. But it's not gonna happen if we're stuck in this US-American, Western mindset where everything's about the money that we earn and we're judged based upon the salary.

I reject those things as valid standards of comparison. - That is incredibly helpful. Thank you so much. I find myself torn between what's demanded of me based on my education and what I feel that I should be doing. And I think that I'll be saving this episode or the replay on my phone to remind me just what the value of that professional mother is because it is so crucial.

Yet, whether out of fear, or guilt, or ignorance, so many people who have made the choice to also work outside of the home just cut that down. And it's rare to hear such a strong encouragement of that importance, so thank you. - Absolutely. It's kind of you to give me the platform.

I feel so strongly about it. And I don't think the answer is, it's not as cut and dried as to say, well, here's the rule. I can't stand the rule of, well, you can't work outside the home, or you can't run a home-based business, or you can't do this.

My way of approaching it is to say, capture the vision, understand the principles, and then in your or my specific situation, what can we do within that? And so I think there's a way at which you, in your situation, with your skills, and your gifts, and your experience, and your perspective, there's a way, and there's wisdom.

And this is where one of the most important things for Christians is to recognize that the wisdom of God is not found in just simply saying, okay, you must, thou shalt do this, or thou shalt not do that. The entire Christian doctrine, the entire doctrine of Christianity, the whole reason Jesus Christ died and rose again was, and he says it, you read through the Gospels, Jesus says, I'm going away so that I can send the Holy Spirit.

And it's the Holy Spirit who gives us wisdom in our specific situations. And so I always wrestle with this challenge on radical personal finance of how do I, share some ideas that will be helpful from the perspective of vision and principles while making sure that individuals are free in their own situation to respond to that.

So there's a practical way, with the perspective, again, that I have for me. Family is my major calling. It doesn't, finances are not my major calling. This is my job. Now, within that situation, how can I practically build my life and structure it in such a way that I'm going to be able to fulfill those things?

It's not based upon, I have to work more than 40 hours a week or less than 40 hours a week. It's not based upon, I have to do this type of job or another. It's based upon, in my situation, with my family, based upon our vision and our vision, what's the wisdom for us?

And that's what has led systematically over the years to me making the steps. That was one of the components of that was radical personal finance. Radical personal finance allows me to be more free. I believe it has higher income potential when compared to a per hour unit of work input.

And I could see, at the stage I was at with my children's lives, and this was another thing about what is the age of my children. At the stage I was at with my children, in their ages when I made the transition, we felt that was the appropriate stage for me to do it.

And so in that first year, when I was putting in a lot of hours, one of the things that was valuable was I was putting in all those hours from home. So I was working a lot, but I was still able to be involved in the functioning of my family.

We still ate two, I was home for all the meals, but we usually eat two meals together as a family, breakfast and dinner. I usually skip lunch and keep working, just have a snack. But we ate two or three meals together every day. I'm still involved with that daily flow of my family.

I'm not cut off on the road for weeks at a time. If radical personal finance had required me to be on the road for weeks at a time, I wouldn't do it. And in fact, recently, I thought I wanted to start doing more public speaking. And I've just come to the decision that I don't wanna be out of the house.

I don't wanna be out of the house for three days here and five days here to fly to Cincinnati and give a speech. I'm not gonna do it. I don't need to do it. And it's not worth it because now, especially, my children are starting to get to that age where there's that major transition from mommy to daddy.

And that's where my influence is so important. And there's that transition that happens with parents in the household. So all that to say that it's been a systematic part of our plans. And if I can't, the rules that I have on the business, if I can't do it with the amount of time I'm willing to allocate to it, I'm not gonna do it.

I'm not gonna play this game of I'm gonna work seven hours, seven days a week and work 100 hours a week just to somehow make more money, to look more impressive to people on the internet. Not a chance. If I become the most impressive person on the internet and I become the wealthiest podcaster and financial advisor and impact millions, and if I don't know my children, I consider that failure.

So I believe there's wisdom in our specific situations that you and your husband can look and say, what's the wisdom at this time in life based upon our unique skills and abilities and our situation? What do we need? What do we have to have? There's a bare minimum. But I tell you, many of the friends and people that I've counseled, if people have this heart, and that's always the question, you gotta have a heart for your children, have a vision for your family.

But as many people I've counseled, and big old house, expensive lifestyle, lots of fancy looking things that look great in your selfie on Instagram, nights out with the cocktails at the bar and fancy brand new cars, there's another way. And it might involve some decreased consumption. It might involve downsizing.

It might involve an older car. It might involve fewer nights out. But personally, I believe that's the superior path. - Thank you, thank you. I think I'll probably, as soon as I'm able to disentangle myself from my current freelancing, I'll probably put on any of the ideas that I have for side hustles.

I'll wait until my boys are old enough to start helping me with those. And considering the three year olds already measuring things with the ruler and telling me how long things are, shouldn't be that long. - Yeah, exactly. Erica, that's what I'm most excited about as a father. And I'm just starting to see the glimmers of it.

My kids are two and a half and seven months old. So my baby, she's crawling around, and my son, we're just starting to get the glimmers of it. But what I have been dreaming of is how can I have my family and my lifestyle fully integrated? Historically, this was normal.

In an agrarian society, historically, the family is an integrated unit where children and parents are working together. And you need the old joke about having all the old farm families that had 16 kids because, well, we need the free labor. That was historically the norm. And so even if you look at families who weren't agrarian societies, you were much more likely to have a family workshop.

Dad was a bootmaker, and so the kids were involved in that. When I look at the family, the strength of that as a family perspective and the benefit for the children, I see that as vastly superior to the segregated society that we now live in, where it's all about measuring everything in economic terms.

The family is disconnected, purposeful or not, whatever. We, practically speaking, we're fully disconnected from one another. There's no integration. And so what I look at and what I've been choosing with my business pursuits is how can my kids be active and involved in my business? And it's gonna mean one thing at five, it's gonna mean another thing at 10, it's gonna mean another thing at 15.

And I don't want to, I think a danger that parents have to be very careful of is to try to make their kids fulfill the parents' dreams. It's very dangerous. I'm a doctor, or I've always wanted to be a doctor and attorney, so you've gotta go be a doctor or attorney, or I am a doctor, so you gotta be a doctor.

I think we should allow our children to express their own personality, their own skills, their own interests. But I'm gonna use the family businesses to, I'm gonna use those family businesses to help them to learn, not in this disconnected academic way that is commonly taught, where everything is pieces of knowledge that are disparate and disconnected.

Rather, life is the point of education. And so, I was even considering some of the conferences I was just talking about and thinking with my wife, like is my son starting to be old enough to go to a conference with me? If I have a seven-year-old boy and any listener sees me at a conference, that's not always gonna be the case, but I want my seven-year-old boy, or I want my seven-year-old daughter to be with me there at a podcasting convention or a financial planning conference.

And I want them to be able to be there helping me and working with me and seeing that. I want them to be learning on the job. That's one of the reasons why I've chosen to focus, as I transition, chosen investment activities on real estate because on real estate, it's much more accessible where I can involve my family.

And my wife's skills and abilities can be extremely well-profiled. I mean, she's the world's greatest finder of deals. And so, if we're trying to fix up a rental house or whatnot, I'm the heavy construction guy. I can deal with that. I can put my kids to work helping me with that where they learn those physical skills that are so valuable.

And meanwhile, my wife is furnishing the house and decorating it, and those are her skills. And so now, instead of it being, well, one of us just goes away and we're totally disconnected now we're working and building the family wealth. We're building our family empire together. And now that practical experience will translate to as the children age and transition from dependency to autonomy, now they'll be equipped with a lot of skills that are very applicable to real life.

And they'll be able to take that, filter that broad experience through their own unique personality and find the right fit for them and for their families going forward. So that's my dream and vision. And that's what I'm excited about. I don't talk a lot about those things 'cause I feel a distinct, I don't have a lot of evidence to point to.

I can only point to other people. I can't speak authoritatively and say, look at my children 'cause they've achieved these certain things. But those are just my dreams and my hopes and my vision for me and my family. - We actually share similar dreams and visions. My husband actually brought myself and my oldest son to a conference when he was seven months old.

And he was actually able to see it. He didn't enjoy it as much as he would when he was older. But everybody there was very excited to see a child there. And there were a few other children that were brought along as well. So it's actually, the professional world is more open to them than you might realize.

And we're looking to get into real estate for similar reasons. His best friend, his family's in real estate. And you do see that generational transfer of knowledge and capability and strength that you have from learning a business at the side of your parents. And one that can enable you to really support your family in all ways, both financially and with your time and with your energy.

So I have seen some empirical evidence that that does work well. And that's why we are aiming the same direction as you are. - How old are your kids now, Erica? - The oldest is three and a half and the youngest is almost two. - Exciting. This is that exciting stage.

When they're no longer just crawling around and you're able to actually interact with them and train them and teach them. This is the exciting stage. - My personal, I mean, I think that, I mean, the stage that you're in from that, four or five-ish, I don't know whether it's four, I don't know whether it's five, I don't know whether it's seven, who knows.

Some people make big a deal about these ages. I think the calendar years are much less important than the child's personal maturity level. Some children seem to mature so quickly and some children don't. And how much of that is environmental versus, I don't know. But I think that age from say five-ish to 12 or 13-ish, I mean, those are the years where we transform them from children into adults.

And I'm convinced it can happen far sooner than 18. I think there's a, I mean, I got a whole podcast. That's why I started another podcast 'cause I didn't wanna mess up all of the personal finance stuff with me constantly sharing what I'm learning, what I'm excited about with parenting.

But I get excited by, I'm excited for you and the stage that you're in. And it sounds, I mean, you guys are in a wonderful position as a family where with your skills and background, the things you can expose your children to and your husband's skills and backgrounds, I'm excited for you guys.

- Thank you very much. And I think you've helped me figure out where to stop stretching myself and where better to apply myself within the family. So thank you so much, Joshua. - Ask yourself this question. If I earn a little bit more money and yet I wind up with a family life that doesn't look how I desire it to look, will that be better?

Or would it be better to have a little bit less money and have a family life that looks better? Me, every single time, and I mean this with every fiber of my being, if I got to the point where I realized, and this type of thing occurs with an older child, but let's say that there's a family listening who their child is in crisis and dads and moms are looking at their child and they're saying, 10 year old, a 12 year old, a 15 year old, whatever, these ages at which, I mean, look at the rates of suicide among children.

So I'm talking that level of crisis, or just even you're recognizing that family relationships are suffering and there's not that same intimate interaction, that same heart to heart sharing that once was. I'd cash out every dollar in retirement and spend every bit of it restoring my child and doing everything I can for the relationship.

And I believe every listener would too. It's just that we only see that when a child gets cancer. We totally know when the child gets cancer and all of a sudden now there's a beautiful young girl, a beautiful young boy that's now bald and sickly, and we understand, well, mom quit, dad quit, and now they're spending every dime on the health of their child.

Well, those are tough situations. The thing about cancer, it's easy to see physically, but I say, are we doing the same thing with the cancer that is not so physical? Are we doing the same thing with relationships? Are we doing the same thing with the disconnectedness? And if more parents would prioritize that family life, which is something that is eternal, as compared to, not eternal in the sense of family relationships, but in the sense that family relationships are for this lifetime only, but from the perspective that the child's soul, that's an eternal good.

And it's also a way that you can impact that goes far beyond anything that one person can do. It's a leveraging ability. If we saw the cancer that can happen that's not physical, why should we not apply the same focus to it? Because the cancer that's physical, it's one thing, but there are relatively few children who are dying of cancer, and yet how many children are dying of lack of love, lack of involvement, lack of guidance, and they're being raised by, well, anyway, you get the point.

So I think that if ever there's a question between finance and family, I'm always gonna elevate family above finance, even if it's other people don't understand, because the finance is simple. It's solvable, and it's doable. So those would be my answers. Erica, I thank you for calling in. It's an honor to have your questions.

I hope that I've carefully kept to, this stuff exposes me personally, and I'll tell you, many listeners might think I like to talk about controversial stuff, but it's really not. It's tough to do it, so I just ask that hopefully listeners would hear my heart and be willing to consider things without attacking me personally.

So Erica, thank you for calling in and asking your question, and I wish you guys total blessings in every area. - Thank you. - Are you ready to check on off the bucket list? Experience SlotZilla, the world's ultimate zip line, located at Fremont Street Experience in downtown Las Vegas.

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