In past episodes of Radical Personal Finance, I've talked about the seven stages of financial independence which I designed a couple years ago. These stages are where you go from stage zero financial dependence and systematically, step by step, work your way through financial independence and on to financial abundance. But the reality is this process is going to take a really long time for most of us.

It's going to take, at the minimum, a few years. At the most, maybe many decades and perhaps our whole life. So here's the question. What if there were a way to short circuit the process? What if you could skip straight from where you are to stage seven, financial abundance, without passing through all of the other stages?

Would that be worth it? Well, I think you can and today I'm going to share with you some ideas on how. Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, the show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now while building a plan for financial freedom in ten years or less.

My name is Joshua Sheets and I'm your host and today we get philosophical. I think there's a way to short circuit this whole process and yes, I know I designed the model so maybe I designed it from the beginning to be collapsed. But I'm going to talk to you about some things that I don't hear many people talking about and I hope you benefit.

And throughout this world of financial independence, wealth building, retirement, early retirement, just this whole world that I live and work in, there are a lot of concepts and a lot of things that we often skip past. And I've been thinking a lot. I've threatened to do this show a number of times, this show on skipping straight to financial abundance.

I've been thinking a lot about it though. This last few days, last week I was interviewed on Paula Pant's program at affordanything.com on her podcast. And she released that show and it seemed to be fairly popular. I've gotten some good feedback on that. And in that show, the dominant topic of conversation was these stages of financial independence.

In short, for those of you who are new listeners, I began with stage zero, financial dependence, move on to stage one, financial solvency, stage two, financial stability, stage three, financial freedom, stage four, financial security, stage five, financial independence, stage six, financial freedom, and stage seven being financial abundance. So I kind of broke this process of wealth building down into some more actionable steps to try to get more wins and more celebrations along the way.

If you're interested in that, go back and listen to episode 174 of Radical Personal Finance or jump over to affordanything.com and you can listen to the podcast there. It is episode 39 of her show. And I'll do more shows on it in the future. And I'll probably release that show into my RSS feed at some point in the future so that you can hear Paula's interview when I'm traveling, something like that.

But I really enjoyed talking about these stages. But even when I was designing them, I was trying to figure out how does this make sense. And who knows, I might change them in the future. But the one that most intrigues me and that really intrigues a lot of people is stage seven, financial abundance.

Let me articulate what financial abundance is very clearly by just simply reading off of the website at radicalpersonalfinance.com where I wrote this. Stage seven is financial abundance. When you reach this stage of your financial journey, you've reached the most challenging stage of all. But it can be a very enjoyable challenge.

You've accumulated wealth beyond the amount needed to fund your own lifestyle expenses with a comfortable margin of safety. Now you have to decide how to responsibly manage the surplus. How will you allocate it productively while you control it? And who will control it when you're done with it? How will you assure that the money is used for good and not for evil?

It's a real challenge, but it's one faced by all those who have faithfully and steadily built wealth throughout their lifetimes. It's the most important stage of all. So that's how I define financial abundance. And we've passed through this point of meeting all of your own needs, meeting all of your current needs plus any future anticipated needs, and you've got plenty of money is the idea.

But I'm convinced that you don't have to wait until you've got that point to experience this mindset. I'm convinced you can have this mindset of financial abundance from the beginning. And I don't mean this mindset of kind of this airy fairy, I'm just going to imagine that I have financial abundance.

I'm going to sit in my easy chair and imagine $100 bills floating into my life. I mean, okay, if some people want to delude themselves, that's fine, but I prefer to stay in the world of honest, you know, I prefer not to start by lying to myself. So imagining dollar bills floating into your life is, I don't know, for some people maybe it's valuable, but more valuable to imagine what you're trying to accomplish and then imagine the plan to get there and then get busy and get to work.

It doesn't come from imagining, it comes from work. But we're not going to talk about it in that sense. We're going to talk about it in a very real sense of enjoying and appreciating that you can move always from a place of financial abundance. Because if you're listening to the sound of my voice right now, I'm pretty confident just due to the fact that you have internet access, most likely on a mobile device, and that you speak English.

Guess what, the vast majority of you are wealthy, incredibly wealthy on a global standard. We don't often stop to appreciate that. You already have financial abundance. Even if you think back to the way that I wrote this, think about how many of these things apply to you. Because I was careful to not necessarily put in here that you can do this all off of the income from your investments.

Read this again and let me ask you this. You've accumulated wealth beyond the amount needed to fund your own lifestyle expenses with a comfortable margin of safety. Now I know that not all of you, and in fact very few of you listening, have that amount of wealth sitting behind where you can just live on your wealth.

But do you not have enough money, enough wealth to fund your own lifestyle expenses? And do you not have a somewhat comfortable margin of safety? Can you have some excess every month? I know not everybody, many of you are struggling, but the majority of you are already there. Now you have to decide how to responsibly manage the surplus.

Do you not have some surplus in your budget? How will you allocate it productively while you control it? And who will control it when you're done with it? Do you not already have that problem? You die and leave your house to your errors. Well, is that what you should do or should you do something else?

How will you assure that the money is used for good and not for evil? Now I know I'm part of the now generation. I know that the idea is that we're supposed to get everything now. We just, you know, my age, my generation, we want to be at the top now.

Well, there's good things and bad things about that. The bad thing is if we get into this delusion of saying that we just deserve it simply because we exist, I deserve to be at the top of my pay scale because I just started and I'm really good looking. Well, come on.

But on the other hand, that now idea is really valuable because why wait if you don't have to? Why wait if you've already developed the skills? Why wait if you figured out a different way to do things? I'm very much part of the now generation because I always think constantly, you know, as Stephen Covey said, I begin with the end in mind and I think the best end in mind to begin with is the fact that you're going to die.

I'm going to die. Now we don't know when it is, but you're going to die and I'm going to die. And so we always begin with that in mind and what's going to happen at that situation. So with regard to the now generation, this, or my being part of the now generation, this dramatically affects my own personal lifestyle.

I tell my family and friends and I tell you now, don't give me a nice eulogy at my funeral. I mean, I'm sure that'll happen. Thank you very much. But tell me now, go ahead and write me a note now and encourage me or do that to somebody else.

Don't wait to give your dad or your mom or your best friend a nice eulogy. Tell them how you feel now while they can actually appreciate it. Because when they're dead, they're dead and gone. They're not listening to you from the casket. Funerals are for the people who are alive, not for the person who's dead.

So make sure that when you get to your friend's funeral, your family member's funerals, that you're not left anything unsaid. Don't send me flowers when I'm dead. Does me no good. I can't smell the flowers. I can't admire the beauty. Send them to me now. August 25th is a great day to give flowers.

That way they can be enjoyed and appreciated. Don't wait to give someone in your family flowers when they're dead. Send them to them now. And then the same thing, don't leave money to me when you're dead. Tell my parents, "Don't leave money to me when you're dead. Either give it to me now while I can spend it and invest it and we can enjoy it together.

Or if you want to spend it on me, spend it on me now. Or let's work on it now." But why wait? Yes, obviously there's a need for the money and we have a certain need. There are some assets that are only going to pass at death because they're being used.

But we can do a lot now if we pay attention. So what's the point of waiting to the time when you get the least enjoyment out of something when you can get there quicker? Why wait? Why work like a maniac so that someday you can go and fish when you can walk down to the shores of a river or creek or pond or lake or ocean near you and drop a fishing pole in the water after work today?

The deferred life plan is not a great plan. Now there's a season for all things. There's a season to work and there's a season to rest. But the idea that I fight against is that somehow you push everything to the future. I don't think you have to. Now there are many paradoxes of finance.

Almost titles today show the paradoxes of finance because I've been thinking about these things that just seem so evident to me based upon the vantage point that I have of looking at the industry and talking to people. I hope you hear it in the way that I interview people.

I hope you hear it when I interview people who are wealthy and I ask, "What's great about what you've experienced and what's not great about what you've experienced?" Now think back to the interviews you've listened to in all 360 something episodes of the show and think back and ask yourself, "Have I ever heard a rich person say, 'Wow, my life just totally changed when I got rich.

It was just so much better.'" You haven't heard that, have you? Because when you're rich, you're just more of who you are now. And here are some of the paradoxes of wealth. First, let me talk about the paradoxes of health. One of the things that's plagued me and dogged my heels for many years was the idea of dieting so that someday I would be skinny without the idea of embracing a different lifestyle.

And I've noticed that people who are healthy and who are fit and who are skinny, in order to get that way and achieve that result and to keep it for a long term, they have to change their perspective. They can't have the perspective of, "I'm going to diet so that I can eat whatever I want." They have to change it and say, "I'm going to become a different person and I'm going to choose to value what it's like to be healthy and thin and fit more than I value the taste of junk food." Keep that idea in your mind that you can observe in society around as we talk about the paradoxes of wealth, because I'm convinced it's a very good metaphor.

In the same way that you don't get thin and fit and healthy by going on a diet for a short period of time to achieve it so you can go back to your old way, you don't get rich by pursuing some get rich quick scheme so that you can get rich and then go back and spend all your money.

The only thing that works over the long term is to become a different person. That's what's so paradoxical about wealth. Because poor people often pursue wealth with the idea that they'll be able to get a lot of stuff. Now, wealthy people often have some nice stuff. All the houses on Palm Beach Island and the yachts on the shores where I live, they're owned by somebody.

But usually they're not so into stuff as the guy next door who's out polishing his new boat every weekend. It's just that the stuff is kind of nice and it's just a small fraction of their net worth and it's great to have, but it's not all about the stuff.

So recognize the fact that when you're wealthy, you probably won't be all that into the ownership and acquisition of stuff. Because in order to become wealthy, you probably gave up some of that along the way. And when you are in the future, going ahead and buying some stuff, it's going to be with a small portion of your net worth and it's just nice to have.

It's nice to have a ski boat so the grandkids can have something to do and it's nice to have a lake house where all the family can gather. But if you had to sell the lake house, no big deal. You could do it. Now, one that's been challenging to me is recognize this, when you're wealthy and you don't have to do anything with your time, you're probably not going to be all that into free time as you are right now where you're working and saying, "Oh, if I just had a break, if I just had a vacation." When you're successful, you probably won't be all that into slothfulness.

Learned this one myself more and more, that when you get yourself in a position where you don't have to work or you don't have to work on somebody else's projects, you'll probably find that you'll want to work and you're going to be working more than other people. Self-employed people, wealthy people often seem to work much harder than many other people.

Why? Because their goal wasn't just free time. The goal wasn't just slothfulness. When you've traveled a lot, you probably won't be all that into travel. You'll probably want to stay home a little bit. Now, to all things, there's a season. I'm not opposed to rest. I'm not opposed to vacation.

I'm not opposed to sabbaticals. I'm not opposed to stuff. I'm not opposed to travel. But those aren't the goal. Those are just things along the way. Self-gratification is limited in its enjoyment. Rest is most valuable when you're tired from work, not as a lifestyle. Have a neighbor of mine, lives on Social Security, very small amount of income, lives very frugally.

All he does is basically watch movies all day. Drives me nuts. I cannot imagine doing what he does. Now, are we different people? Obviously. We're different personalities, yes. But I just don't know how to relate. I mean, I have to recognize my own limitations. Maybe even some of you listening say, "I'm nothing like Joshua." Yeah, Joshua, that sounds great.

I don't know. I don't know how to relate to you if sitting around and watching movies all day, every day, seven days a week is your thing. I don't know. I respect your ability to be an individual person and to do what you like to do, but I don't get it.

I don't get it. It seems like a waste to me. Why waste your life on stuff that doesn't matter? Invest your life into something that matters. That's why retirement, in my opinion, is a very short-sighted decision. Now, here I'm not talking about stopping to do work or quitting a job.

I'm talking about retirement as this idea that we're going to go from being productive to being unproductive. Why would you stop being productive? Why would you stop contributing? Why would you stop working? Don't do that. Now, if you want to change, cool. Go for it. I don't think I'll be doing radical personal finance in a couple of decades.

I'll be doing something else. I don't think that if you work for GE, you need to work for GE the rest of your life. But don't pull out of the things that matter. Adjust every stage along the line. That's what's so great is that if you get freed from this idea that I've got to work this career for 30 years so that I can retire and dispense with the whole retirement goal, it opens you up to other approaches, other possibilities, other things.

To me, even though I'm probably struggling to articulate it, I don't want to necessarily go into all of my hopes and dreams, but it just seems like I've got so many compelling things, so many compelling projects, so many things I want to do, I can't imagine turning around and saying, "Oh, I'm not going to do anything." Now, I couldn't have said that some years ago.

That's one of the most important things about pursuing financial independence is as you start to experience and enjoy the process and start to recognize that you do have some freedom, that you do have some capital, that you do have some control. It opens your mind to different things. It's hard to tell a mailroom employee, "Oh, yeah, fishing, it's not that great," if they don't like being in the mailroom, if they feel like their work in the mailroom doesn't matter and they're dreaming about going and fishing.

It's a lot easier to tell someone who's out on the fishing river who's enjoying it and saying, "Yeah, this is good, but you know what? I'm also excited to get back to my work on Monday morning." So consider carefully the lifestyle that you want to live and build it intentionally now.

The reason that I spend so much time on this show and in past episodes talking about imagine the lifestyle that you would be at if you were financially independent, imagine it, is because I don't think that lifestyle for most people looks like sitting around and watching movies. You don't have to take my goals on for yourself, and please don't.

You don't have to take my desired lifestyle. We're individual, unique human beings. We're unique. There's no one else like you. There's no one else that's going to put things together. But imagine the lifestyle that you're working towards and then see how you can get there more quickly. The key that I want you to focus in on is once people reach financial abundance where they have more money than they can spend, more money than they need to cover all of their needs along the way, they start to consider the meaning and the impact of their life.

If you ask wealthy retirees, some of which are in the audience, some of which of you are listening to me right now while you're driving around in your RV or you're sitting out on your back deck looking out over your retirement home, if you ask them what matters to them, the number one thing they'll tell you is their family.

It's always what it is. Well, if that's the truth, and if you don't believe me, you go do your own research. Go talk to all the wealthy retirees that you know and ask them how important to them going and seeing their grandkids is, being with their family for Christmas.

Most of them tell me their family is their number one most important thing. Well, if that's the case, doesn't it make sense to pay attention to that all along the way? You don't have to have an RV to be able to prioritize time with your family. You don't have to be financially independent to be able to prioritize experiences with your family.

Begin with the end in mind, and instead of pursuing the foolish treadmill existence that so many of us see around us where you just work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work, so that someday you'll wake up and be rich and then pursue the things that you're going to do.

Work, work, work, and along the way pursue the things that you're going to enjoy when you're rich. And if time with family is there, why don't you pull back a little bit on your work during the time with family and spend a little bit of time with the people that are near you.

Make the Christmas holiday a priority. Don't go back to work the day after Thanksgiving. Adjust things and pay attention. Build the legacy. Work into it. So recognize that when you're old and rich and when you have this financial abundance, there are going to be some things that are going to be important to you and family is going to be at the top of the list.

What else? What other impact? Well, there's going to be about the lives of the people that you're with. You're going to be considering, "Did I encourage that person? Was I a good boss? Was I a good co-worker? Was I a good leader?" So recognize that and don't lose sight of that along the way as you're building wealth.

Make sure that you can look forward to your retirement party and have it well filled with people who appreciate how you've sowed into their lives. When it comes to your money, think carefully about what would happen with your money when you're old and rich and have more of it than you can spend and you got to figure out what to do with it.

And recognize that your money is probably not going to be your legacy. Think about this. If you were going to make a list of historical figures, people that you admire, that you know about, that you studied in school, how many of them are notable simply for the fact that they were rich versus how many of them were notable for the impact or the legacy that they left in some other way?

You can look at this from almost any extreme. Henry David Thoreau, was he a legend? Is he honored and read about in freshman classes, college classes? Is Walden Pond, on Walden Pond read because he was rich? Or was it read because he wrote a book? You don't have to be rich to write a book.

You don't even need a typewriter. You don't need a computer. You can sit down with a pen and a sheet of paper and write a book. I feel like we often forget this these days. I was thinking about Jane Austen the other day and I was thinking about her life and I was thinking about how she composed all of her books, wrote all of her books out by hand using a pen and many sheets of paper.

You ever stop to think about how simple that is and yet how many people have done it? One job I had when I was a boy was I had a friend of ours who had written an autobiography and I typed it for him. This was 20 years ago perhaps and he sat down with legal pads and a pen and he wrote out his autobiography.

Now, the first place I go is I'm not saying you should probably use a computer. It's a little bit more efficient. But my point is to show that you don't need that much money. You don't need to go and buy a brand new Macbook and put Scrivener on there in order to have all the latest greatest writing tools.

You just need a pen and a piece of paper. And yet how many people have a legacy and have made an impact on the world because of the time that they took to sit down and write a book or make a speech? And yet how many rich people are there who if they didn't pay attention to their legacy, if they didn't pay attention to the things that they were going to leave behind and just left money, they're forgotten.

Because guess what? When you die and leave all your money behind, that money will be spent quickly. Probably much more quickly than you want it to be. But ideas, impact, contribution, service, love, those things will continue. So are you paying attention to your legacy? Is there something that you should be adjusting and not focusing first on money?

Because pay attention. Once you've reached financial abundance, you're going to stop thinking so much about money and you're going to be thinking about your legacy. Don't wait to get there. Now what's actually going to happen with your money? Well who's it going to go to? For most people there's two major things.

Number one is your children. Number two is your charity. So if you don't start from a place of financial abundance, you might make the mistake that many wealthy people make, where they're so focused on earning the money and building the capital and piling it up that they forget to slow down and train their children how to handle it.

And guess what happens? You die, you leave the money to your kids, and it ruins their lives and your grandkids' lives. Because you didn't start from a place of financial abundance. You weren't beginning with the end of mind. You weren't recognizing the fact that someday you're going to leave a lot of money behind and you better do the work now to make sure that your kids do not squander the inheritance.

So if you recognize that, then the way that you skip to step seven and you're thinking about financial abundance, then along the way you work on training your kids. And it starts from day one. You train character, you train discipline, you train the skills of self-control, you train the ability to defer gratification, you train work habits, you train diligence.

You train these things in your children. Then that way, when you're old and rich and you die and leave a lot of money to them, then you're not giving it to them in a way that's going to ruin their lives. Rather, what they will be able to do is they'll have the capacity to take that money and then continue to channel it and continue to invest it into the types of things that you will be proud of.

So begin with the end in mind and recognize that financial abundance is where you're going, but you can't wait until you're 63 years old to start thinking about it. You got to get there now. Now guess what? Should you wait until you're 63 or until you're 93 years old and you die to leave all the money to your kids?

I don't think so. How does it help your 45-year-old son or daughter when they're finally kind of established in their career and finally have some money? How does it help them for you to die at that point in time and leave them a lot of money? Wouldn't it be a lot more helpful to help them at the early stages of their life?

Well, you already know that intuitively. That's why you're thinking about paying for their schooling and paying for their college, et cetera. But what about more than that? What about helping them establish their business? What about helping them build a house? What about helping them fund some of these things at the beginning of their life?

Most parents that I've interacted with have the idea about paying for school and paying for college, but they're not thinking about the rest of it. And they want to leave a lot of money when they're dead, but they don't want to invest when they're younger and when they're alive.

Even for investing when they're younger, when they're alive. That way you can see it. You can monitor the results. And that's when your children need it. If you do a good job investing in your children in the early years, they won't need or want your money later. They'll just say, "Dad, I don't need it.

Mom, I don't need it. Just give it to somebody else." But if you don't do a good job in the early years, they'll be desperate for your money and it'll destroy them. So train your children. What about the other aspect, charity? I think this is the other place that people are very short-sighted.

Why are you looking forward to charity? Why are you looking forward to doing something in the future instead of doing something now? You say, "Well, there's some compelling reasons. I'm focused on my business." Well, that's true. There are different stages to life and I have no problem with that.

There are times, there are seasons. There are seasons of family, there are seasons of business, there are seasons where you should be doing more or should be doing less. But when you're old and rich, you're going to be looking at a pile of money and you're going to be wondering what to do with it.

The answer, the solution is that you're going to want to solve some kind of problem. If you look at what rich people do with their money, they certainly buy for themselves a nice lifestyle. They certainly enjoy some of the trappings of wealth. They enjoy the ski vacations. They enjoy the fancy house.

They enjoy the private yachts and the private planes and they enjoy being able to do nice things for their family. That stuff's cool. I'm okay with it. But once those things are taken care of, they're thinking about their impact. They're funding super PACs to change elections. They're funding activist groups.

They're funding the changes that they want to see in the world. Guess what? You should be doing the same and you should be doing it now, not when you're dead. Because once you're dead, you lose effectively all control over the money. Even if you've gone through and developed a beautifully written airtight trust that clearly lays out what you want to direct your trustee to do, there's no guarantee, there's no way to guarantee that your trustees will not find a way to change what they're doing.

Some of the most well-planned estates and some of the most well-meaning people, their descendants are spending the money that they had accumulated in ways that would make them roll over in their grave if they could see it today. So go ahead and get busy funding the changes that you want to see in the world.

Go ahead and get busy investing into the things that are going to make an impact. Put your money where your mouth is and do it now while you can see the results and measure the impact. Because you need to develop the skills and prove the concepts when they're small.

Could you imagine if I gave you $1 billion and I said, "You've got to figure out what to do with this $1 billion in a way that's going to do something good." What would you do? If you actually think and consider that problem, my guess would be that you'd have no idea of what to do.

I've thought about that problem. I don't know that I would have anything to know. I don't think I would know what to do with the money. I would be so overwhelmed if I were just handed $1 billion. Where do you start? What do you do? Which is why, what do you see rich people doing?

I'm going to line up and I'm not going to do my own thing. I'm going to give to Bill and Melinda Gates because they've got the infrastructure set up. Which there's some arguments to be made in that. My point is, consider, would you know what to do with $1 billion?

If you don't know how to effectively invest $100 into something that you want to see changed, charitable contribution, something that's wrong with the world that you want to improve. If you don't know how to invest $100, why are you worrying about the millions? Start now. Do the $100. Do the $1,000.

Fund a little project. Test it. See if it works. If it works, put more money into it. If it doesn't work, scrap it and move on. So much money is wasted in these large charitable organizations because there's no call for efficiency. There's not enough supervision. So fund the projects and make them prove themselves out.

Make sure they work. And if you don't have the money for charity right now, guess what? You can still experience the benefits of giving by giving in other ways. You don't need to fund the construction of a Habitat for Humanity house with a $100,000 check if you don't have an extra $100,000 to give away.

But your next door neighbor could sure use a hand building their shed. Why don't you start there? Or why don't you go ahead and make the rent payment for the single mom down the street who just lost her job? Or bring some groceries to those other people who are facing a hard time?

You found out about somebody who just lost their job, call them up, ask them what the size of diapers their kid is wearing and put an Amazon subscribe and save order in for a while until they find another one. Those are simple things. And yet those are ways that you can build the habit and enjoy the abundance that you already have.

And if those causes are important to you, you'll gain the most in the future by being able to give money to them if you're already involved in what the organization is doing. Why would you give a lot of money someday to an organization that you haven't given a little money to before?

Or why would you give money to the organization if you haven't been out with them seeing their work first hand yourself? If you go ahead and get involved now, you can experience the joy of seeing the impact while you're working your way through the stages of financial independence. There's always a way to make a difference in it.

If you focus on where you're going to be down the road and you think about financial abundance and then you think back to today, I bet you can come up with some unique ways that you as an individual can start to enjoy the fruits of your labor now. And it'll make the work that you're doing today seem much more meaningful and much more fulfilling because you're coming from a place of abundance.

You're coming recognizing the path that you're on. I think you can learn from the exposure and the impact and the interviews I've done that these are the things that people look for. Go talk to the rich people in your town and I bet you they'll spend more time talking about the Boys and Girls Club or the Junior Achievement or the Halfway House or whatever it is that they're involved in.

They'll spend more time talking about that stuff that they're involved in, that they care about than they will about their new boat. So recognize that you're probably going to be similar to them as you walk a similar path and move from a place of financial abundance. I feel clumsy in my articulation of this concept.

I often feel clumsy in my ability to articulate many of these things and I just feel like I got to get this out there. Forgive me if this was clumsy. I know it seems like I'm violating even the stages but I really do think there are stages and I don't think these things are in conflict.

I'm working to become completely financially independent but I'm not waiting for financial independence in order to function and to labor at the things that I believe are the most important. I'm not going to sit around and waste 40 years of my life just thinking about the money without realizing the fact that I'm going to die and all the money is going to be left here.

That's why Jesus taught, "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." So I want you to hope that I've been able to effectively communicate at least enough to help you to see where you're going to be when you're wealthy.

I've had various consulting calls with different people who say, "Josh, I've got more money than I need. What do I do?" And the answer every single time, I'll save you the money, I'll be happy to consult with you if you want to. The answer every single time is simple.

What do you care about? What change do you want to make? What legacy do you want to have? Now is there a way that you can get involved now? And is there a way that you can start putting some money there now? There is. I haven't found a single issue yet that there's not a way that can get involved.

Sometimes it's starting a new business, sometimes it's funding another entrepreneur, sometimes it's changing something, and sometimes it's funding a legal battle. There are all kinds of things. Sometimes you make money off of it. But if you get this through your head that someday you're going to be thinking about what now, what next, and you're going to look at a pile of stocks and say, "Okay, it's great.

It's money. That's nice. But I want something more. I want my money to matter. I want to do something that I care about. I want it to make an accomplish, to be impactful. I want it to mean something." That's where you're going to be if you follow this path.

Yes, you might do some things along the way. You might travel. Great. I'm intending to take time off and take a few years off at different points throughout my life and do some long-term travel with my family. That's cool. But you're not going to do it for 50 years.

You're really not. You're going to look for something that matters. When you're in that stage, what you're going to be looking for is how can I invest my money into something that matters to me. While you're working your way through these stages of financial independence, don't wait to figure out what you're going to do once you have more money than you need.

Get busy recognizing the fact that you already have more money than you need and start to invest small sums into the things that matter. Do it intentionally. Do it carefully. Do it with vision. And then when you reach that point in time, you won't wake up desperate to say, "I don't know how to give my money away." You'll be very, very practiced and you'll know the things that work and the things that won't and you'll be able to ensure that the money that you've spent so much time building and being a good steward of is allocated responsibly and productively and that it's used for good and not for evil.

That's it. That's all I've got. Again, forgive me if this wasn't as clear as I would like. I've worked and worked on this and I feel a little bit... Well, I'll put it out there and let you decide. I hope it's useful to you. Thank you all for listening to the show today.

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Happy to talk about anything that you have, any questions that you want to cover. Tomorrow I'll be out with a Q&A show. Sorry that the episode's been slow the last couple of weeks. I was doing a little bit of traveling but also just struggling with a few things behind the scenes and I feel like I always say that I don't like to talk too much about the stuff behind the scenes just because, well, a lot of it's been challenging for me and I'm working to figure it out.

So this coming week maybe I'll talk about that and just I do intend to make more changes. It's not meant to be cryptic. I just wasn't prepared to go into it. But in the meantime, I'm working to get some stuff done and so I know the frequency of the shows has suffered a little bit so bear with me.

Working as hard as I can and doing the best that I can as I learn all the new skills that I need. Be back with you soon. Thanks for listening. Transcribed by https://otter.ai Thanks for listening. Transcribed by https://otter.ai (upbeat music) ♪ With a bang ♪