Today on Radical Personal Finance, we do a Q&A show. I have four questions lined up. How do we handle lots of expected and encouraged – wink, wink, by your superior – job obligations that are expensive and that cut into our savings rate? Question number two, I am trying to figure out a way to pay for my wife's graduate school.

Should we take out student loans or should we take a loan against our TSP? Question number three is I'm in the middle of school looking to possibly start a business but I'm concerned about the impact of that on my schooling and my career. Question number four, how do I take and turn a 16-week paternity leave into something that will help me generate much more additional cash flow?

Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance podcast. My name is Joshua Sheets and I'm your host. Thank you for being with me. Q&A show, that's where I do my best to try to help you with some thoughts. I try to choose questions that are applicable across the board. Of course, you have to be the judge of the usefulness but take some of these ideas and figure out if you can apply them to your situation even today.

I have a mondo queue of questions that came in from the audience. After I had messed up the email system and then got it fixed, I wound up with a huge, huge, huge deluge of emails which thank you to all of you who have emailed me. But I wound up with a huge deluge of emails and a lot of them had great questions, many of them from – that I thought would be applicable and useful and interesting to talk through on the show.

So today, that's what we do. Let's get right to – well, before I get right to the question from Stephen, the first question, sponsor of today's show is Paladin Registry. If you need a financial advisor, the best place for you to start your search is at RadicalPersonalFinance.com/Paladin. We get asked a lot, "Joshua, how do I find a great financial advisor?" It's tough.

My main purpose here with Radical Personal Finance is to give you knowledge, insight and frankly just equip you a little bit better, give you some defensive skills against the financial advice industry. But at the end of the day, when you need specific advice, you can't have an email sit in Joshua's list here for six months before he responds to it.

You need an actual advisor and a good way is to find that person is to go to RadicalPersonalFinance.com/Paladin. It's a registry service. Jack Waymire, the founder of Paladin, was a financial advisor himself and said we need to have somebody who's carefully vetting financial advisors, not just the licensing people who are giving the most basic of exams to people.

We need to know who is somebody's – how do we – we need to have somebody look through the disciplinary records and look through their experience and their qualifications. So if you're looking for an advisor, go to RadicalPersonalFinance.com/Paladin, P-A-L-A-D-I-N. That will forward you through to a landing page where you put in your name, your address, your phone number, and the amount of assets that you have.

Then Paladin will take that and they will match that up with a couple of advisors that are in your area and they will put you in touch with them and you can interview them and see if they might be a good fit for you. I can't promise that you're going to find a financial advisor that works for you.

It's got to be a very personal specific fit. But it's at least a good place to start. Start your search at RadicalPersonalFinance.com/Paladin. First question comes in from Steven. Steven says, "Joshua, thank you very much for the work that you put – I mean thank you first and foremost for the work you put out for us.

You not only inform your listeners but also serve as a more articulate mouthpiece for many of the ideas that we as your listeners may share but we don't – but do not possess the necessary way with words to properly convey to others. I have on many occasions simply linked someone to one of your podcasts as my retort to a particular argument, almost always bringing them to my or our point of view in the subject matter.

I write to you in need of advice. I myself am a somewhat mustachian. Sorry, coined a term for your financial independence followers and I'll refer to myself as that instead." We should come up with a term. Pete "Mr. Money" Mustache has built a huge community for himself but I try very hard not to poach off of the work that other people do.

I try to just do my own thing and let other people do their thing. So I don't have any – I like mustachians. No problem with it. But we should come up with a term. If you have a great term, let me know. Comment on today's show or tweet it to me or something and let me know what we should do.

Best I come up with is radical something or other. That seems to be the term that I've coined for myself. So I myself am somewhat of a mustachian having always been a spend-conscious, simple living investor. I actually came across this whole financial independence early retirement movement by accident and upon having become enchanted by the concept, I made the concerted decision to start saving 50% of my net pay.

Much to my surprise, upon looking at the numbers, I realized that I was already doing so. In actuality, I was saving 52% of my net pay. Now for the kicker. As mentioned earlier, I am in the military. More precisely, I am a senior military officer. With this role has come much pride, commitment, and honor.

Unfortunately, it has also come with additional expenses. There are certain social and professional obligations that come with the territory of senior leadership, many of which carry a hefty price tag. Formal events, special uniforms, forced outings, i.e. golf, I disdain golf, and mandatory socializing. It has even been suggested to me by superiors that I should look into moving to a pricier area farther from base to be amongst my peer group.

Much of this is fine and dandy, save for the fact that it's having a negative effect on my savings rate. To be honest, most of the commando fun, as we call it, is not at all how I would spend my time were it not in the interest of networking and being part of the team.

How do you suggest I manage my personal belief system and desired spending habits with the necessity to not commit professional suicide by ostracizing myself from my more spendy peers? Thanks again. Where to start? Steve, that's a good question because it's a question that we all face. We all face it to a different degree and depending on our industry, it looks different, but it's something that we all face.

With your role in the military, it might come with formal events and special uniforms and forced outings and mandatory socializing. When I was working as a financial advisor, it came with the expectation that you wear suits to work every day and that you drive a BMW or that you – what else?

Friday night happy hour that you kicked in when you went to all the charity events that you got invited to, et cetera, and you buy at the silent auction and those kinds of things. For other people, it's just maybe even as simple as going out to the lunch with your coworkers or going to the expensive coffee place, those types of things.

So we all face this to some degree. When you're in a culture that doesn't praise thrift or frugality as anything that's really worth admiring, you're going to stand out and that's obviously the situation that you find yourself in. We all have to figure out how to – we all have to figure out what to – how to deal with these things.

Now, frankly, it's – your email is a little bit offensive to me in the sense that military personnel – I always think that a military personnel is – this should be where you're basically given everything. If I were to go in the military, the expectation that I would have is considering the contract that you make where you basically surrender all control of your life, you have no say in where you go, what you do, and your life is on the line.

You shouldn't – you should basically have things taken care of. That's the history of military service. So if I went in the military, one of the reasons – major reasons financially speaking would be that I would expect to have my housing provided and to get my stipend and just have these things taken care of.

Now, you're obviously not – you're a senior officer. So things change in a senior officer and it does look like a much more political system. It does look much more like other organizations. But it's just a little bit annoying that you have to deal with these things. I won't go into that subject anymore but I understand the frustration.

In some ways though, your decision is the same as the rest of us. You have to decide how committed you are to your goal of saving money and how committed you are to your career and to what extent these things are actually in conflict. Every career comes with costs and it's important to make an accurate accounting for those costs.

So in your case, the costs of your career are largely those things that I just mentioned. When you're in the military, they own you. You have no say over where you go and what you do. It doesn't matter. You are at – you serve at the pleasure of the – what was I – I guess the president.

You serve at the pleasure of your commanding officers. So you don't have – that's one of the major costs. Now these other things also obviously have a cost and you've got to weigh them. It can be easy I think to lose sight of the actual costs when you are recently excited about a new goal.

So something like a dress uniform for dress events. My guess is that this is a one-time expense and I'm sure the uniform is expensive but you probably have some sort of uniform allowance that can help offset some of it. Even if you don't, it's a one-time deal. The corresponding cost of this would be in the non-military civilian world would be that at a certain level as an executive, you need to own a tuxedo and you just need to own a tuxedo because you're expected to go to the charity events and represent the company at the gala, etc.

And there's going to be a cost for that and that's not going to be reimbursed. You are a senior military officer. Thus, you're going to be expected to attend these formal functions and you're going to need to be dressed appropriately. If you are a senior corporate representative, you have the same responsibility.

You have exactly the same responsibility and that just is one of the things that comes with the territory. Now, don't get too worried about it. It's a one-time cost. You can care for a uniform and you can wear it for the rest of your life. So although it might be a big – or at least the rest of your career.

Although it might be a big expense one time, it's not that big of an expense. Now that's different than say getting in with the local once a week golf outing where now you're going to be paying range fees. You're going to be paying those things on a continual basis and golf is going to be bracketed by lunch and it's going to be bracketed by drinks after the golf game, et cetera.

Well, now you're signing up for not just a one-time expense but for many, many expenses over time. Those are two very different things. And so don't get too excited about the prospect of saving all my money such that you major on the minors. 1 Page 2 of 9 Page 3 of 9 Page 4 of 9 Page 5 of 9 Page 6 of 9 Page 7 of 9 Page 8 of 9 Page 9 of 9 Page 10 of 10 Page 11 of 10 Page 12 of 10 Page 13 of 10 Page 14 of 10 Page 15 of 10 Page 16 of 10 Page 17 of 10 Page 18 of 10 Page 19 of 10 Page 20 of 10 Page 22 of 22 Page 23 of 23 Page 24 of 24 Page 25 of 25 Page 26 of 26 Page 27 of 27 Page 28 of 28 Page 29 of 29 Page 30 of 31 Page 32 of 33 Page 33 of 34 Page 34 of 35 Page 35 of 35 Page 36 of 36 Page 37 of 37 Page 38 of 38 Page 39 of 39 Page 40 of 41 Page 42 of 42 Page 44 of 44 Page 45 of 45 Page 46 of 47 Page 47 of 47 Page 48 of 48 Page 49 of 49 Page 50 of 51 Page 52 of 52 Page 53 of 53 Page 54 of 55 Page 55 of 56 Page 57 of 57 Page 58 of 58 Page 59 of 59 Page 60 of 62 Page 62 of 62 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63 Page 63 of 63