It's Friday here at Radical Personal Finance, and that means we do Q&A. I speak with you and answer your questions. Today, we talk about the interest rate environment that exists, and we ask the question, "Is it possible to transform society from a society of spenders to savers?" Also, should we pay off a mortgage early?

Should we and how do we rent out a little bit of our backyard and a highly desirable zip code to put a tiny house on? And the possibility and potential of releasing Radical Personal Finance en Español. Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance podcast. My name is Joshua Sheets, and I'm your host, your virtual, I'm so desperately to say virtual financial advisor, but I try to keep my language clean.

There are a couple of meanings that we could draw from that. Basically, I'm your financial friend, the guy who sits here and answers all of your questions, or at least on Fridays I do that. This is the show where we talk about living a rich life today while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.

And on Fridays, that's when you can call me in – or you can call me up and ask me your questions. And I really enjoy doing that with you. I really enjoy answering the questions. I like it, and it's helpful to me. I love the two-way feedback in the conversation.

I hope you're enjoying these shows, and I would invite you to be a member of these shows. If you would like to join a call like this, you need to become a patron to the show. You can do that at RadicalPersonalFinance.com/patron, and you can read all the details there, but you need to join and be a patron of the show.

And then you'll receive access to the information to be able to call in and speak with me. And as you'll hear in today's call, two things. Number one, I'm willing to talk with you on anything that you would like. As other talk show hosts would say, it's an open line.

I'm willing to talk with you about just about anything. So you can make comments. You can ask questions, anything you like on that. Secondly, this is a really great opportunity if you would like to get a question answered personally. So I'm intending to do more and more Q&A. I've got lots of emails.

I'm going to be doing lots more shows on listener questions. But I love doing these Q&A shows, frankly, because they're simple for me. They allow me just to show up and talk, and that helps a lot for me to keep the show a little bit more streamlined with my production schedule so I can get more of the back office projects that I'm working on done.

So I'd invite you, if you are not yet participating in these calls, to do so. Today on today's call, we have two callers. At the beginning, Jason, and at the end, Mauricio. So I invite you to call in and become a patron of the show so that you can call in and join us on a Friday call like this.

Let's get to it. Jason, welcome to the Friday Q&A call. Looks like at the moment it's you and me here sitting here. Yes, sir. Welcome to the Friday Q&A call. I want to give you an opportunity. I'll sit here and answer questions, anything you like, and do my best to give you something useful and thoughtful.

So kick us off with any question that you'd like to ask. Well, I'd be glad to do that. I think I have three on tap, depending on where our conversation goes. But first of all, yesterday, the Federal Open Market Committee once again decided not to raise interest rates. I don't know how many quarters in a row, but which leaves interest rates at seven to eight year consistent lows.

My question to you is, given the low interest rates, extremely high prices in the market, is this a good time for me to take the extra money I have and work on paying down and paying off my mortgage? Given a certain rate of return that I know I am paying my mortgage on.

If you didn't pursue this course of action, what else would you do with the money? Either put it in the bank or put it on my mattress. That's pretty much what I would do. Do you think that this money would be something that you would always keep as a safety blanket or is this money something that you would desire to invest in some form or another, open a business, buy a piece of land, buy a hot dog stand, I mean, whatever.

But whatever way that you invest it, would you ever have a desire to invest this money? It would be investable with the right opportunities at the right prices, certainly. Do you have enough money saved where if you chose to pay off the mortgage, it would reduce the balance to zero?

No, sir. So the way I answer the question in my best understanding right now is relatively simple. The way to decide whether or not you should pay off the mortgage is to figure out what you're giving up by paying off the mortgage. So let's use two very simple examples.

If you're giving up keeping the money under your mattress earning zero percent, whether that's your literal mattress or your figurative mattress, you can have $100,000 in a bank account and you get nothing. It's astounding at how low the interest rates are right now. So if the opportunity cost of what you're giving up is putting the money – is having the money under a mattress and then turning around and paying off the mortgage, then financially speaking, you're going to be better off paying off the mortgage.

And that will do two things for you. And that's why I asked the follow-up question of could you pay it all the way off. If you could get the mortgage all the way paid off, not only will you save the interest that you are paying on that money, but also if you can get the mortgage balanced to zero, you will eliminate the cash outflow from your budget and from your life, which can improve substantially your lifestyle.

It could free up money to save. It could free up some of your income to spend in other areas that maybe that mortgage is restricting you from, that type of thing. So if you're just simply giving up a zero percent interest rate, then yes, it's better off to pay off the mortgage.

Now, the flip side, let's say that you're giving up the opportunity or willingness to invest in a productive asset. I always like to use real estate to real estate simply to keep the comparison similar. But let's pretend that I had $100,000 sitting in a bank account and I had $100,000 on my mortgage, but I could look across the street and there's a house sitting there for $100,000 that I could buy and rent out.

Well, if I were willing to take on the risk and the work of being a landlord, I would rather take the $100,000, pay cash for the rental house, keep my mortgage, and then just simply let the tenant's payments pay my rental payments – excuse me, pay my own mortgage payments.

And that way I've put the money to use in a more effective way where now I have bought a producing asset instead of using it just to pay off debt on a consumption asset. And I'm going to have a cash flow, and then I can dedicate that cash flow if you still want to do it.

If you want to do it again and again and again and put together some rental houses, you could do that. But maybe you have a business that keeps you busy or you're just not interested in doing that. You could take that cash flow and just use that to pay down the mortgage.

So if you're giving up that opportunity, then you're probably better off going and investing the money. And this is the real bind that people find themselves in is saying, "Well, what would I invest the money in?" If I invest the money and purchase a mutual fund that has historically returned 8 to 10 percent on my money over time, if you're paying off a mortgage that's at 3.5 percent and that's a deductible 3.5 percent, it's hard to make that case that it's not better to invest the money in the mutual fund.

But if you're just giving up the zero percent, it's better off to – you're better off putting the money into paying off the mortgage if you just – it's financially going to be better. Now, the reason I asked you the question if you're going to pay it all the way off is I learned something the hard way that for me I think is something we don't talk about enough, and it's this.

The major benefit for you – and I assume you're at a stage in your life at which you're working. You're not financially independent. The major benefit for you to pay off a mortgage when you're working is to eliminate the cash outflow need from your budget. So pretend your mortgage payment is $1,000 a month.

What you want to do is you want to get the mortgage paid off so you can clear the $1,000 a month and not have to pay that. But if your mortgage balance is $100,000 and you've got $50,000 sitting in the bank, if you take the $50,000 and you write the check, you haven't eliminated the $1,000 monthly payment.

You've simply lowered the amount of the mortgage balance and thus saved yourself a little bit of interest. So that's something I didn't get until I went through the experiences I went through the last three years. But now I get it pretty loud and clear. And so if I were in a situation where I'm working for money, meaning I'm not financially independent, then what I would do is I would not pay – I would not pay extra payments a little here and a little there on the mortgage.

And I'll get to the exception that I do see as being relevant. But I would not pay little payments here and there on the mortgage. What I would choose to do in that circumstance is I would accumulate the money in a separate savings account. I would eat the cost of the foregone interest savings for a few years.

I would be willing to do it. That way I've got all the money there, and if over the next two or three years my grandma dies and I can buy out my brother for a half interest of the house that grandma lived in and I can – some kind of deal comes up where I can just buy myself some income-producing assets.

I've still got the money. Or if three years from now I've saved $100,000, then I'll just go ahead and write the check to – I'll go ahead and write the check and then go from a mortgage balance of high to zero because there's no additional safety gain from owing less money on the mortgage.

For people who are workers, the only safety comes when you eliminate the mortgage. So from a financial standpoint, you are much safer to have $50,000 in the bank and $1,000 a month cash outflow need in case you get laid off, your business goes through a tough time. We go into a tough economy.

You make a mistake. Whatever it ends up being, you're much safer having the cash to make that $1,000 a month mortgage payment than putting that cash into the mortgage down payment just to get 50 percent reduction. Is that concept clear in the way that I explained it to you?

Yes, sir, it is. It is. That's sort of where I am. I don't have a huge chunk of money to pay, but I do have disposable income every month put extra onto the mortgage. So I understand what you're saying. Just save that money instead of incrementally paying it because the mortgage itself is the issue.

Right. Not necessarily how much I owe is an issue, but paying a couple thousand bucks a year down on the mortgage, I still have a mortgage. Right. So think about it from a safety perspective, and I'll tell you the exception that I would make in the plan that I've described.

I'm making up numbers. I don't need your actual numbers. You own a house that's worth $150,000. You have a mortgage balance of $100,000, and you got $50,000 in the bank. You lose your job. Well, in that situation, the house is secured by an asset – excuse me, the mortgage.

Forgive me. The mortgage is secured by an asset, the house, and that's a saleable asset. You've got $50,000 in the bank, and if you've got a $1,000 a month payment, you've got four years and two months, 50 months, which you can make that mortgage payment. So if your family is in a bind because you lost your job, you can sit back and you can make that mortgage payment.

It takes you a couple – you decide I need to sell the house. I need to move for a different job or something. You've got safety. You can make that mortgage payment every month. It takes you a couple months to shine up the house, get it ready to sell.

You can get it listed on the market. It takes a few months to find a buyer. You've got some negotiating room. The buyer gives you $135,000 to move quickly, and you go ahead and satisfy that. And you've had money in the bank to pay your bills, pay your mortgage, keep everything current, and move on your way.

Now, on the flip side, let's say that you did the opposite. You had a house worth $150,000, mortgage balance of $150,000 in the bank. You take $50,000. You write down that mortgage from a balance of $100,000 to $50,000, and then you lose your job. Well, now you've got no money.

And even if you reserved back, say, six months of expenses as an emergency fund, you still only got six months of expenses. And so now you decide something happens. You decide you need to move, get a better job, need to sell the house. You've got to take money from your emergency fund to shine up the house and get it ready to sell.

And you're basically stuck because you only got a few months of wiggle room, and so you start to be in a place of desperation. So I don't want people to be there, and I realize the error of the advice of just making little bits of extra money because I think that might – it doesn't create the safety.

Now, what are the exceptions? Well, the obvious exception is if you are just going to spend the $50,000. You put the $50,000 aside. You could throw it at the mortgage, but instead you leave it in an account. And then six months from now, you're down at the RV show and all of a sudden you come home with a fifth wheel.

Well, the fifth wheel might enhance your lifestyle and it's your money and you can choose to do that. But financially, you're not going to come out ahead because you would have put that into debt reduction, and now you've turned it into more of a consumption item on a depreciating asset.

So it might be still the right choice to make because it enhances your lifestyle, but it's not going to come out financially ahead. So that's the obvious risk. The less obvious risk is if you do what I propose, which is just keep the money in a separate account. If you do what I propose, you might not have the psychological enthusiasm of hitting that goal.

Whereas if you're chunking an extra $300 at the month of the mortgage and you got the amortization schedule printed out, it's on the front page of the – front of the refrigerator, and you're putting red lines through those extra payments, and all the family is on board and like, "Yeah, we're going to get this mortgage gone in 3.2 years," and every month you look forward to getting those statements and seeing how much it's gone down.

If that gives you extra psychological boost as compared to just, "No, we've got a pile of money over here in the savings account," that's also where my advice would be wrong. So you've got to weigh those considerations in light of your actual numbers and your actual situation. I could see somebody who's in a stable job, stable career.

They have savings, and they're very motivated, and they've got a very short-term game plan to get rid of the mortgage. And again, 2.3 years, I could see, "OK, let's put the chunk there, and let's just get focused on this." Again and again and again, each month we're making these payments.

So that's how I would handle it. I appreciate that. That answers my question. That one. Go ahead with the next question. On the same lines, let me ask this question. On the same lines, Robert Kiyosaki was on last week or so, and he talked about savers being losers. I was wondering, as well-read as you are, I read a lot and listen to a lot of folks too, do you ever see a day where saving will be valued as much or more than debt will in our culture in America?

You know, I think that savings on a broad-based cultural perspective – for the broader culture, my answer is no. For a minority of people who are committed to wealth-building, and that – I don't see any trend on the horizon that would change that being just a tiny minority of people.

For the minority of people, I think savings is valued. So let me start with the minority of people. I understand what Kiyosaki is talking about, but I think it's more marketing hyperbole than it is practical financial advice. The reality is if you have savings, it's going to be a whole lot easier for you to borrow money.

Immediately before recording this call, I've just released a show with a friend of mine here in town. This is somebody who is very wealthy and – very wealthy businessman. We talked about it. He started as a plumber's assistant when he was in his teenage years, going to high school half-time and working half-time.

Today, he's an extremely wealthy man. I can't give any figures, but here's what I would say. I used to drive a tractor on his sod farm and he'd be coming out and he would practice – he bought a helicopter and practiced flying his helicopter around the fields. So we'd watch him over there flying his helicopter around his farm.

So you do the math as far as how much helicopters cost and whatnot and you can take some guesses at his level of wealth. But the fundamental hallmark all the way through that he said was savings. I don't know any consistent investor, wealthy person that I know that I've ever heard of that I respect who wouldn't say that savings is the fundamental foundation of anything.

If you want to go borrow half a billion dollars, you better have some savings and some assets to go with it. Now, so you got to sort through how much of Kiyosaki's message is hyperbole, is differentiation. Remember in the marketplace, one of the key questions is always what's my unique selling proposition and what's my point of differentiation?

Every business needs a point of differentiation. His point of differentiation for 20 years has been you don't need anything except the knowledge that I give you in my books and courses and seminars. You don't need money, no money down, etc. If you investigate his courses and his classes, everything is always you don't need money.

Just open it up on a credit card. So that's been his shtick that he's taught for 20 years. So I wouldn't expect him to come off of that at this point in time. I don't think it's prudent financial advice. So among the wealthy and among those who are interested in becoming wealthy, savings is the cornerstone.

Now, on a broad scale perspective, I don't see how – in our current culture, I don't see how savings will become valued by the majority. The majority of our society buys fully into the idea of consumption leading to happiness. Sadly, I think the majority of our society has been trained to be easily herded sheep from the perspective of largely their schooling background.

John Taylor Gatto wrote a book called Dumbing Us Down. It's a provocative title, but you read his evidence, and sometimes it's hard to argue with it. The average person from a cynical perspective, it's not hard to look at the mainstream US American consumer and not just wonder if it's kind of like the matrix.

If the mainstream person isn't just essentially a body that goes to work and works and buys and that stimulates the economy and they work so that taxation can be pulled off. It's hard not to see the parallels once you start looking around with an honest viewpoint. I don't see anything in political culture, in popular culture, in anything that's going to turn the tide with one exception.

So, the last kind of nail in the coffin, think back to George W. Bush in the wake of 9/11. If I'm connecting my speeches properly, this may not have been when he was standing in the rubble with a megaphone. But the speech saying, "Support America. Go to the mall and buy." When you got someone in that situation, you got the president of the United States saying, "Do your patriotic duty and go out and spend money," that's symptomatic of what's happening in the broader culture.

Now, I do think that what happens is when people face tough times, they wake up and realize, "Hey, I was stupid." And what's interesting is if you look at the level of household debt, you run the charts over the last – since the financial crisis in 2008. The levels of household debt have stayed constant and have declined in many areas.

Credit card debt is down. I can't accurately cite the statistics off the top of my head, but I have looked at that and I have noticed that. So I think when you face difficult times, when you face recession and depression, people wake up and they realize, "Man, I've been an idiot." It's kind of like the debt moment that happens.

People wake up and say, "Man, I was stupid. Why was I spending money so crazy?" And they stop buying new cars and they start driving their existing cars a little longer. They start putting everything on a credit card because they realize, "Hey, I need to do something a little different." So I do think that if and when we face difficult times, should that happen, whether it's a long, prolonged recession or depression, should that happen, that could have a transformative impact.

Think about – for me, my grandparents went through the depression. You think about how different most of our parents or grandparents that went through the depression. That experience permanently altered their financial behavior and paved the way for massive wealth. So if there were external circumstances that came in, a significant prolonged recession, depression, very difficult times, man, I don't want to go through that.

But that I could see having a major cultural impact because it has before. What do you think, Jason? I would tend to agree with you. It's going to be a very long conversation on this issue, but with a debt-based money supply, every line of credit, every credit card, every loan that we take increases the money supply available.

But there has been a cultural shift in the last 40 years or so from every commercial you see on TV just about is about the credit card, what's in your wallet, borrow this, buy this, buy this. I think it's going to take a massive cultural shift, and it may take another great depression of some kind like you're talking about to see change in attitude.

It really is an attitude, I think, to behavior perception. So I agree with you there. Next question, Jason. Go ahead. All right. I think I just have one more, and you may have already covered this a little earlier. This is my last question for you today. The big, well-known folks in the financial independence early retirement realm that you've talked to, that you know, what would you say, if you had to break it down, the consistencies that you would find with their ability to say to be financially independent, you have such a wide array of people, personality types, professions, those sorts of things.

If you had to break it down to a few basic fundamental consistencies between all of them, do you have any thoughts on what that might be? There's probably a difference between the pundits, those who are teaching on the subject, as compared to those who are practitioners. Were you thinking about those who are following through with the early retirement plan, or were you thinking primarily about those who are teaching?

I would say those that are following through, you know, the Mad Fientist, Mustache, Jim Collins, Go Curry Cracker, the Root of Good, all those guys that are actually sort of going forward and living it, as compared to the pundit part. So, as far as unifying themes, it's becoming increasingly a large movement of people from all walks of life.

I wouldn't say that there's any dramatic mainstream cultural impact. It's still a tiny, laughably small minority – and laughable, I use that word to say it's a small minority – of people across the general culture. But as far as the people that I interact with, the listeners of my show, I can judge best from that.

I mean there's people from all different perspectives and all different walks of life. And then people with whom I interact with, there are probably some common characteristics. There seems to be a high percentage of engineers. For example, I know that Mr. Money Mustache did a survey of his readership at one point several years ago, and the dominant occupation was the occupation of an engineer.

But that would also align nicely with Tom Stanley's research, talking about how engineers are some of the most effective prodigious accumulators of wealth, to use his words. When comparing their levels of net wealth to their expected wealth based upon their income levels, engineers are extremely efficient at converting income to wealth.

So I don't know that that's necessarily a hallmark of the early retirement community as much as it is that profession. The type of person who's an engineer is more likely to be a careful, thoughtful person who presents a careful, thoughtful approach. So I'd say people come from all walks of life.

I guess the biggest thing that I see is I see people who pursue early retirement, financial independence, because they don't want to be stuck. They don't want to come from a place of feeling trapped. So whether it's they're trapped in cubicle land or they're trapped in an occupation they don't like, once you grasp the simple concept that I can take my current income, my current job, I don't have to go out and make a bazillion.

And this is a trap that a lot of people are stuck in, the trap of saying I've got to make a million dollars a year. You don't, and that's what's nice about the early retirement community. You don't have to go and make a million dollars a year. But once you recognize I can just take my current income, but what I can do is I can control my expenses.

And controlling expenses is something that you can do, and everybody can see, at least intellectually, how I'm capable of reducing my expenses. And if somebody doesn't, all you got to do is give them the example. Listen, I was earning – I used to live – when I was in college, I used to live on $2,000 a month, and here I am spending eight.

You know what? I had a pretty good time in college, so I could live on $2,000 a month again. Or if I have kids and I have family now, okay, but I could probably get closer to $2,000 than eight. So once people recognize that all I've got to do is save a high percentage of my income for a relatively short period of time, that's like the magic key that unlocks the door.

Well, if I just do that, then I can have this. I don't have to be a genius investor. I don't have to be a genius entrepreneur. All I got to do is control my expenses and do some wise things. I think that's why it's taking off, and that's what gives a sense of hope to people who feel a little bit stuck because it's very, very doable.

So that would be the common trait that I see in the early retirement community. But as the community grows, as my audience grows, I'll be able to survey people more and gather better data that maybe we can answer that question. We've got a new 760 phone number that joined us.

Go ahead and introduce yourself and ask a question if you like. Hey, Joshua. This is Mauricio from – coming from San Diego. Mauricio, welcome. Thank you. I feel like I'm talking to a celebrity. Not a celebrity, just a friend. Okay. Well, thanks for that. So my question is quite simple, and I hope I can express myself right because I'm not an English speaker natively.

But here's my question. I live in San Diego, and the weather – we really can't complain about the weather. And I've been considering for a while, together with my wife, of renting a space on my backyard for tiny house travelers, basically, or builders. There seems to be some demand in my area, but it's not the only thing that is in my mind, renting them a space.

But it's also the aspects of my wife and my recently born daughter. She's 10 years – 10 months old. Should I just rent the space? But I'm concerned about their security. What's the process for renting out? It's not a regular tenant. It's a new tenancy, I guess. So what's the process that I need to do to make sure that they're actually good tenants?

I see this as a good investment, but it's not as secure as other investments. It's not very – it's kind of risky. I've reached out to some people, and they said they don't need much things done for my part. They just need a place to park their RV or their tiny house.

So I was wondering – it may not be an answer that you have at the moment, but it's just an idea if you could interview someone that can explain to someone on the renting space for parking for a tiny house owner to see what things we need to consider for that part.

Because it's easy to rent them out, but then what are the rules to – if you don't like them, to pretty much break the deal. So that was basically my question. A couple of follow-up questions. First, do you own the property that you are considering renting out, or are you renting the property?

I own the property. We bought this house about a year and change. About a year and a couple months ago. Great. So if you own the property, then you're going to have the ability to – you might have the legal right to rent it out without breaking tenancy – the restriction on subletting your land or your apartment.

Do you know anything or have you researched anything about the local municipal codes? No, I have not. This is fairly new, but what I'm trying to do is – people that I reached out to, they said they have a meet-up group. They meet every month, and there's an upcoming meeting where people that are owners of tiny houses, people that are actually looking for someone to rent their space, will probably attend.

So this group is actually going to cover all of those things. So I'm looking forward to attend those meetings to answer some of my questions. That would be where I would start. The tiny houses – for those who aren't familiar with the concept, there is a movement of people who build tiny houses, and essentially these houses are sized in order to fit on a trailer.

So in your mind, think of the size of a travel trailer. Usually much smaller than the largest fifth wheels, maybe 20 feet in length would be normal. And they build them on trailers in order to be able to park them and avoid having them registered as houses. But instead of using an RV type of approach, they build them looking like houses so that they're more comfortable, they're better insulated, more solid construction, more of the residential field, and because a lot of people just think they look cute.

So that's what a tiny house is. The idea is by building it on a trailer, it can be registered and is registered as a trailer. And so it doesn't have to be registered as – it doesn't have to follow building codes. It's just a trailer. Whether or not you can legally do this is going to depend on the municipal codes there, and there are two things that you'll need to watch out for.

Many municipalities have code restrictions on the placement and visibility of trailers. So for example, where I live here in Palm Beach County, if you have a boat or an RV or a trailer, you can't park those things on the front part of your house. You can't park an RV legally in your driveway.

It has to be hidden back on the side or back of your house and usually up behind with a six-foot privacy fence barricading it. I am an expert on Palm Beach County code based upon extensive run-ins with code enforcement. So you cannot legally park a boat or RV in your front yard.

So the first thing is since it is a trailer, you would have to check those codes and see if the location qualifies. It very well could. If you have a cute little backyard with a little tree and there's a privacy fence around it, you could very well get a trailer back there.

The second thing would be if your municipality has put in place any codes for tiny houses. So with their growth in popularity, as with anything, the government feels that they need to regulate things. And so the interesting thing is in this case, sometimes the regulations are going to be promoting this idea.

Many municipalities are trying to promote things that are green and eco-friendly. And so they recognize that a lot of times people who are living in this manner are having less of an impact. And so they're trying to be accommodating with the legislation, especially in the places where there are large communities.

I don't know if that's the case in San Diego. And if you were in Portland, I would bet money that there are codes, new codes that have been passed that are regulating the tiny houses. So just check into that. Start at the meetup group and then get into some of the online forums.

I don't know where it is, but I'm sure there's a tiny house forum that you can dig into and they'll tell you that. If the city will not get on your back for it, and I would bet that you could find a way to do it without them getting on your back.

If the city would not get on your back for it, then I think it's a great idea. It's a way to take some of your property and make it a little bit more productive. And I think it's an awesome idea. You might be able to gain a great neighbor.

You can gain a little bit of extra income. You can take some of your unused property and transform it into a more useful purpose. You'll have to figure out the tenant will need an electrical cable and they'll need a water hookup. Usually they don't use sewers. They usually use a composting toilet in the tiny houses.

But they will need a water hookup and an electrical hookup. So you'll have to figure out how to meter that or to include it in the price of the rent. But I bet you would have a lot of takers if you started advertising it in San Diego and advertising the real estate.

I think you'd have a lot of takers. I think it's a great idea. Is that helpful? It certainly is. And I know it's kind of a personal question. Since I've been following you, I know you have two children and they're still in a young age. And I just want to hear out what your opinion is and would this be something that you'll do, not from the investment perspective, that is something that is easy to make money, but would you have someone renting your space, living next to you, which you'd be concerned about what kind of people they're renting from you?

What would be your answer on that? What would be your opinion on that? Yeah, I would absolutely do it. But I would do it with normal, reasonable precautions. So I would conduct my engagement with the person in the same way that I am going to do it with a potential renter of any kind.

So I would do a credit check. I'd do a background check. I would just follow my spidey sense. And does this person – do the hackles on the back of my neck come up? Is there something that I sense that's wrong? A few things that I would look for is I would look for how do they maintain their house?

How do they maintain their car? If someone is going to go through the work of building a tiny house, that right there, as it stands right now, as we record this in March of 2016, that's an unusual type of person and it's, I would say, probably very likely to be a person of solid character.

That's not a normal – this is not a normal thing to do in our society. And the people who are doing it are – they have a vision. They have a dream. They just – you don't get the same idea of them somehow being undesirable or dangerous. I just don't see it.

I don't personally. I mean all of the homeless people that I interact with, I mean some of them, of course, you have to be careful with. But generally I don't find that people – even people who live on the streets, I don't find them to be – I mean there's people sometimes who need some help.

And so when you get someone who's drugged out and addicted, you got to be very careful, of course, with a young child. But even people who live in cars, people who live in RVs, there's a big difference between that versus sometimes the people that you find locally going into some trailer park somewhere.

There's a very different class of person. So I would not consider the type of person just in general stereotyping. I wouldn't consider the type of person who's going to build a tiny house that's very cute and well-painted and they spent $40,000 on the thing to have their little private place to live.

That's not trailer trash. So I wouldn't be opposed to it. But I would take precautions. Check them out. I think frankly – I mean I think it's really healthy for kids to be exposed to as broad a range of experience as possible. But of course you are responsible for the health and safety and well-being of your kids.

So if you sense somehow that something is amiss, I mean we've got to be careful. We live in a world of – I mean the task we face as parents in our modern era is daunting. It's extremely daunting. But even just statistically, people who abuse kids are often not strangers.

They're often family members. So, yes, we have to be careful and you should care for – you need to be careful. But I would – me personally, I would pursue it. I definitely appreciate the insight and your personal response. There's definitely a lot more discussion between my wife and I about this option.

We already own another house that we're renting out. So we like the idea of renting out and kind of building a real estate investment. And the way we wanted to do it here in San Diego because housing is quite expensive compared to other areas or where I used to live, we wanted to sort of supplement our cost of housing by kind of renting out a space that we're not using at the moment.

So that was the idea. But I definitely need to talk to my wife again and discuss this further and maybe go to this MIRA group and do more research about this topic. The other thing that I – since I joined the Facebook group, and this will be short, but I heard you speaking in Spanish.

So I don't know what your popularity would be in the Spanish-speaker world in the U.S., but I think it will be an idea for something for you to consider expanding for the natively speaking Spanish speakers. If you ever consider doing a podcast or an episode in Spanish, I don't know what your Spanish is at the level, but I've heard that you spend much time in Nicaragua.

I'm originally from Mexico, but I'm just throwing out the idea out there. I've wanted to do Radical Personal Finance in Spanish for many years, but I don't have the time. And my abilities in Spanish are – well, I can communicate, but I don't have a high degree of fluency.

And to do it, I would like to have to practice and do a lot. And one day – well, let's see. One day I'll probably do it. Possibly one day a week, something like that. And do Radical Personal Finance in Spanish. I think I have a domain name, but one day.

You can judge for yourself if I would be capable or not of it, but I would love to do it someday. All I said for those who don't speak Spanish, I'd love to do it. I've wanted to do it. I just don't have the bandwidth right now to do it.

So if any Spanish-speaking listener wants to do it, take my stuff and run with it. There's a huge opportunity in it right now, and I'll get to it when I can. But I won't be disappointed if others have pursued it on their own. Thanks. I definitely consider you have a pretty good level of speaking Spanish and fluidity.

So you definitely speak Spanish pretty good. The reason for my idea is because I think me being from Mexico – I'm actually a U.S. citizen, but I'm originally from Mexico, and I see the Latin American community actually lacking also a lot on personal finance. Because I do hear a lot of U.S.

Americans actually being prepared on this subject, but I see a lot of poor areas and people lacking on this sort of education. So that's why I think if someone out there would be like, with your level of preparation and education, offering this knowledge, it would be great for those people.

So that's where my idea came from. So I'll give you, Mauricio, the other more important question. In considering the idea, one of the things that I've struggled with is what the appropriate way to do it is. And I'll share my observations, and I would ask you for your feedback on this.

But where I live, here in West Palm Beach – it's different than Miami – but in West Palm Beach, the majority of the Spanish-speaking community here in West Palm Beach, most of the people of Hispanic background are acculturated. They speak both – they're bilingual. They speak both Spanish and English like you.

They're fully acculturated. It's at the bottom levels of society, the maids, the nannies, the lowest-paying jobs who are not acculturated. So I talk a lot. For example, when I hire guys, I hire a lot of – I have hired from time to time. I'll hire some guys to help me and go down to the day-laboring place and hire guys.

They're usually from Mexico, Guatemala, something like that. And I hire them to work with me, and I always just ask them and probe them on the situation. And the biggest challenge with those who are Spanish immigrants to the United States who are unacculturated, with whom I've interacted, is the level of financial education that they need is extremely basic.

They're not working professionals who are engaged in the community. They need to learn how to build – get a credit score. Most of the ones with whom I've interacted, they're not here legally. They don't have papers. And so they're engaged in – it's not that they can't get jobs, but they're engaged in work that's necessarily low-paying.

And I just don't have enough experience in that world to know how to really be helpful and effective. I don't know how to do anything other than to share some basic advice. But, I mean, when I was fixing up my house, I had a couple of guys that worked with me for a few days and spent a lot of time with them.

They were from Guatemala, and we talked a lot. And, I mean, they're living on $400 a month, and then every bit – and they're making – I'd say if memory is right, they're making about $2,500 a month. They're spending two grand – they were sending two grand back to their family, and they were living on $400 or $500 a month.

So I don't know how to – I guess I just don't have enough experience working with people in that world on a daily basis to feel like I have anything to contribute. I could contribute to people who are moving up in the immigrant ranks where they've gone from day labor or off-the-books jobs into mainstream jobs.

I can contribute there. But then my other concern is on a global basis. I mean as you well know, Mexico and financial success in Mexico is very different than the United States. And one thing I learned traveling in Central America, as I have, and briefly in Colombia, that's the only country in South America I've been to, is pure and simple is not the same.

And so here in the United States, I can speak with confidence regarding opportunity. I can speak with confidence regarding the importance of work ethic, and I can speak with confidence that if you can set goals. But man, I tell you, Mauricio, I went down and spent some time in Nicaragua and you've got half a million people in Nicaragua who are just incredibly wealthy and you've got six million people who are trying to figure out where's the next – where's my food coming for tomorrow?

And I guess I feel distinctly limited. I'm not so confident that I really have something to offer. I don't know how to solve those problems. I don't know – my experience is so limited that I would – I really – I don't have – it's not only the language thing.

I could deal with the language thing, but I just don't know that I have anything to offer. And so I'd love to help somebody who knows more. It's not a current source of research for me, but I do try to pay attention. And my hope is that as freedom continues to spread around the world, primarily through technological access and as the barriers break down, as the – I mean that's what I hope.

And so as societies become more free and access becomes more available that – as is already proving to be the case – that the levels of poverty around the world will be lifted. But I've just – I guess I've just felt – I felt inadequate. Like I don't know if my stuff, with exception of just the basic instruction, I don't know if the experience I have is applicable in an international context.

I really don't. Do you have any insight on – from your experience on those questions that I think about? Well, I definitely agree with you. Now that you express it in that way, I think it does make sense. You knew who your – you have an idea of who your market was, and I can definitely relate to that.

You're kind of looking for people that are actually somewhat educated in the personal finance world and they're trying to improve it, but it's definitely a different market, different conditions of life. Your knowledge and your expertise really doesn't apply, as you mentioned, the same in different countries around the world.

There's a lot of different variables, so I do agree with you. So it was just a wild thought on my behalf. I want to – Just thinking about what I do. Go ahead. I would like to do it. So I guess I'm soliciting your feedback and other people's – not necessarily now, but in the future.

But I think I could – so I do believe that I could craft a message that would be effective, and I do believe I could serve the Spanish-speaking community. I really do believe because I believe the principles are – some of the – number one, the principles of wealth are the same.

Some of the concepts that I teach are the same in every place. The two things where I get – where I do feel limited is, number one, if I were to speak and teach the unacculturated Latinos here in the United States, I would quickly feel frustrated with working at that level.

It tests my patience, and by working at that level, I mean explaining the details of how to put together a budget, explaining the details of establishing a credit history, explaining the details. I worked with – I was – when I was a financial advisor, I was the only certified Spanish translator in my office, and so I would go and work with the Spanish people.

And often what I found was it was just so challenging because there was such a – there was a base body of knowledge for an unacculturated immigrant that didn't exist in their experience. And I found it hard to be patient and slow down and feel confident that they were fully grasping the things that I was explaining to them.

So I feel like I could do it, but I would have to really work at it. And then on the global scale, I guess I just want to recognize the reality that some principles are transferable, but some of the specifics are not. So if I were to do it, I could not do it with the specificity that I do in radical personal finance.

I would have to do it by focusing on those core principles that are true in every culture and then encouraging the listener to search for the way to apply those principles in their own context. There are core principles, but I think a lot of times we as US Americans – and I certainly was this way, but we as US Americans are arrogant with the idea that you can just be successful anywhere if you just go anywhere.

And I've traveled enough to know it's simply not the case. There are – you can always rise – you can apply certain principles and actions on a global basis to where you can make improvements. But there are structural problems in many societies that will lead to the exclusion of certain people from certain opportunities, and it's just a fact of life.

And so those things are going to have to be either solved at the level of regulation, opening up additional freedom so that the society can become more mobile, or they're going to have to be solved with technology kind of forcing it. And that's the trend that I see that I'm very happy about is technology is bringing access.

The rural farmer now has access to the world markets, and I remember – I mean this concept has been around for years. When I was in college, I read Thomas Friedman's The World is Flat, and it talked about how the massive revolution that is happening with the access to technology.

Ten years later, it's all – it's exactly – I mean it's way better. I remember as an illustration – I remember when I was in college, there was a project that was trying to be funded where this NGO, non-governmental organization, was trying to put together this computer for Africa.

And it was supposed to be this cheap $200 computer with a solar panel, and it was all the rage. And then the iPhone was invented. And today when I travel, I mean number one, everyone has a cell phone, and in a few years, everyone is going to have an Android because what you've taken is now we could take a $50 Android.

And that $50 Android does way more than that computer did when I was in college. And so that trend is irreversible, and it's going to – it is transforming societies now, and I'm very hopeful that it will continue to transform societies. But in the meantime, I've got to build a foundation here in the English-speaking world and do my best.

Mauricio, one other comment on your – one idea for you on your tiny house is do you know what the rent that you would get from one tiny house might wind up being? Any guesses? I think it might be around the $500 to $600 a month. Okay. Consider also in addition to just possibly renting out the lot for one person, consider the idea of you buying or building a tiny house and renting it out instead of to one person on a monthly basis, renting it out on a nightly or weekly basis on Airbnb and check to see if there might be a demand for that in your area.

I know there are a lot of people who are doing that successfully, and it's possible that you could go from, say, $500 a month to a much higher number based upon renting it out by the night. And then that could be even a more productive way to do it, and especially if you have the capital to buy a tiny house or to install one, of course, check your rules.

But that could also be a much more productive way of earning a higher revenue model. So I wanted to recommend that to you as an idea. That definitely sounds like a very approachable and feasible idea. Yeah, I started asking. There's a contractor that has come to our house. How much would it cost to actually build?

They call it a companion suite, and I think it's allowed by the code in our municipality. And that option was actually quite expensive, so that's when I started looking out for the low investment options, such as just renting out the space. But Airbnb, in fact, there are a few houses around my block that actually are doing that, so it's good to know that there's market out there.

Yeah, you'll have to find out. Any other questions I can answer for you, Mauricio? No, those were pretty much my questions so far, and let me let you know that this has been a pretty good investment supporting your show. I think I just started joining and being a patron of your show, and I think it's been the best spent $14 that I've made so far, so I'm very glad I did so.

I'm so glad. Thank you for saying that, and thank you for letting me know. I'm working hard to provide all the value that I can, and the thing that gives me the most joy is just to hear people implementing some of these ideas. Because the transformative influence – I mean, if you can – whether it's build an additional suite or rent out some of your yard, I mean, $500 a month is a substantial amount of income, and that can free you up.

Financially, that can make a difference in your life, and that'll allow you to invest in the lives of other people. So, thank you guys for listening. Thank you all so much for the questions today. I appreciate you calling in on today's Q&A show. Have you noticed that tamales are like our family?

Sweetheart, could you get me a sweet tamale? And besides being authentic, she always makes the tamales. Did you know that at Northgate Market, you can find different flavored masa and all you need to make them from scratch? I always bring freshly made tamales from Northgate, but shh, my mom doesn't know.

So, darling, where's the girlfriend? And the holidays wouldn't be the same without my mom, but also without my entire family, just as tamales wouldn't be the same without that authentic flavor that represents us. represents us. Northgate Gonzalez Market. Every visit has a story.