Today's special Q&A episode of Radical Personal Finance is sponsored by HelloFresh. Visit HelloFresh.com and use the coupon code RPF30 to save $30 off of your order. 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 10 years or less.

My name is Joshua, and I am your host, and today's show is a Q&A show. The way these work is once a week at this point, doing my best to keep to a once a week schedule. Once a week, I open up the call phone line to patrons of the show, and you get to ask me anything, and then it goes out on the show.

I enjoy doing these Q&A shows because it gives me a good amount of feedback, and it allows me to answer questions from the audience, which is really fun. It keeps the show topics varied and diverse, and it gives you a chance to ask your question or make your comment.

You can say anything that you want. So I've got five callers waiting on the line right now. We're going to get right to it in just a second. Before we do, if you'd like to join a call like this, just sign up to become a patron of the show, RadicalPersonalFinance.com/patron, and access to these Q&A calls is one of your benefits, RadicalPersonalFinance.com/patron.

First let's go to Matthew in Tennessee. Matthew, welcome to the show. Let me know what your question is, please. Good morning, Joshua. Thank you for taking my call today. My question revolves around the missing money concept. Have you helped clients find missing money using sites like literallymissingmoney.com? If you have, what's the process look like?

Any helpful pointers? It always comes across as really scammy to me, but I could be wrong. I haven't used that website specifically, the missing money, but just from the name, I'm aware of how it works. In essence, there are government databases of unclaimed funds. Let's say, for example, that you had a life insurance policy and it died and they couldn't find – the insurance company couldn't find a beneficiary, et cetera.

At some point in time, that may go and revert back and it needs to be published as available money. Or let's say there were a lawsuit settlement or somebody died. Your long-lost aunt and she died in test state with no next of kin. Then that money gets published and then I guess these websites access a public database in some way and allow you to find it and then file your claim on it.

I've not used any of them. I don't know – I haven't heard of them being scams. I have found money and I forget the process. It was so many years ago that I found something that I was entitled to and I know I've had family members as well. If you put your name into some of the websites, it seems like oftentimes you can find $100 or a couple of $100 that was missing somewhere.

I don't know enough to say about scams or not scams. I think that it's a legitimate – it's certainly legitimate that there is missing money out there. But in terms of which website would be the best to use, I simply don't know. Have you actually tried filing? Are you showing up as having money missing in the database?

No, I've not tried. I've actually went on their website and that's what's kind of throwing me off is that the websites are quite dated. And that's what was kind of pushing me back a little bit was that – I don't know if that's actually rational either to go onto a website and be like, "Oh, this looks nice and therefore I should trust it." But sometimes it does help.

But no, I haven't tried it and I haven't – I was mainly asking the question which you answered in that is it legitimate and is it worth actually going through the time of – Well, I guess that's debatable depending on value. But I'm saying is it legitimate practically. I think it is legitimate and I don't know if you have to go through the website.

I just did a quick DuckDuckGo search here and it looks like there – it goes through the National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators. Has a website that you can use, search state by state. That seems to be probably a more officially endorsed website. So again, that's National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators.

But then it says that they endorse a free search database called Missing Money. So perhaps that is the best place to start. I don't know whether it would be possible to go directly through the government, through the local state government, et cetera. And I would be very, very cautious about giving information out anytime you're dealing with that.

But I'm not immediately scared of it. Is it worth it for $100 or $200? I don't know. Probably not. Is it worth it for thousands if you could find thousands? Probably so. So if any other listeners have an idea of how this works or if you've gone through it, come by the show notes for today's episode and post that in the comments so we can benefit.

Matthew, since I didn't have a good answer there, you want to ask another question? Matthew McQueen Sure. OK. So in your opinion, what's the distinct difference between the CFP education and the MSFS education? And I know that you'd mentioned it on the show before that your previous employer covered the cost for that MSFS.

But actually going through the program, in your opinion, do you think it would have been worth shelling out the $20K that it costs for the program? So that's two different questions as far as the difference versus what it's worth. So here are the differences. First, the CFP designation is a professional designation.

It's not a degree. It's a professional designation and it's granted by the CFP board, which is a private industry organization that simply exists to provide the CFP designation. And the steps to getting the CFP involve – I believe it's seven classes at this point, seven specifically focused on various aspects of financial planning classes and a comprehensive exam at the end of it.

And then if you pass the requirements, there's also an experience requirement and a testing requirement. If you pass those requirements and you have – and you pay your fees every year, then you get to use the certified financial planning credential and designation. And it's certainly – at this point, I would say it has the highest brand awareness and the highest knowledge in terms of the consumer mind.

And I think it's a good designation. The education to get there is relatively broad-based. The MSFS stands for Masters of Science in Financial Services. Basically it's more commonly known to be a master's degree in financial planning. And that is an official college degree that's going to be granted by an educational institution.

So the process is much like any other master's degree. It's not based upon the specific CFP designation board. It's granted by the university. And the MSFS – my experience, I did my MSFS with the American College, which is a college of financial planning up in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. And there – when they did – when we did the MSFS, it required a number of different courses and in different areas.

And then some of them were self-study and some of them were study in person, some capstone courses that were all together in a seminar format. What I experienced with the MSFS is that it was much deeper in terms of deeper study in some specific areas. So for example, I remember that the coursework involved a deeper dive into retirement planning and into some of the modern science around retirement planning.

And so it was much more about reading some of the papers and reading some of the new techniques that financial planners are using to try to solve the retirement problems. It was much more up-to-date and it was much deeper level rather than general broad understanding. In order to pass the CFP, you need to have a general broad understanding of rules and regulations.

But the CFP is technique agnostic. So they wouldn't talk about, yes, you should use a buckets of money approach or you should use a safe money, risky money approach or they wouldn't get into that kind of approach. Whereas in the MSFS, that would be an example of the types of things that we studied.

How much should – when doing a retirement distribution plan, how much money should you put in annuities versus just simply mutual funds, things like that. The MSFS, I'm actually lapsed on my CFP right now. I don't actually – even though I have all the credentials still hanging on my desk wall, I haven't paid them their fees this year and I lapsed on my CE.

This is some of the kind of practical things. The CFP requires a certain number of continuing education credits every year. I can't remember if it's 20 or 30 hours and I got behind last year and I haven't caught up my CE yet. Then they also require a fee. So they require 360 bucks a year to be able to use the CFP designation and to display it.

So currently, I don't call myself a certified financial planner because I lapsed with them and I'm not listed in the database anymore. On the flip side, the MSFS is just simply a college degree. So I still do use that designation because I have the degree and there are not ongoing continuing education credits required for it.

Would I pay the 20 grand for the master's degree? It would depend on the circumstance that I'm in. In general, in a financial services productive capacity, very rarely will a client actually care about your academic certifications. What a client cares about is your knowledge and there's no reason to pay for academic certifications if you have the knowledge in terms of you can do it.

Some of the most productive financial services people that I know have no financial planning designations of any kind but they're very, very productive and they can be very, very smart. Now, usually, the cost of actually getting into it does make it worth it and most of the time, the cost is relatively small.

So if I were actively still in that business, yeah, I think I would probably consider it but I would do it slowly over time and I wouldn't fall into the trap of thinking that it was going to make a big, big difference. The only place that certification makes a big, big difference formally in terms of the pay is for somebody whose pay is going to be a change based upon the academic degree.

A lot of times, somebody – if they get an MBA or if they get a master's degree, then there's an automatic increase in pay of a certain amount and then you can run the analysis of it. Would I pay for it out of pocket? I don't know. I would probably lean towards doing it but it's so hard to say.

It's not really going to make that big of a difference for somebody who's knowledgeable. The biggest thing where I think designations make the difference is they help transform the person's confidence and they help the person to learn more. There's good industry data to show that the people who are the most credentialed are often the most productive and I think the reason is because it builds confidence.

I know for me, it helped me to build confidence to where I felt like I could actually give real tremendous financial planning value to somebody because I had the background academically. But I wouldn't focus on it first. If I were just getting started in the business, I would focus on production and then I would build up over time.

I couldn't answer it beyond that. That answer the question enough, Matthew? Any follow-up clarification before I go on to the next caller? Matthew Fossum No, that absolutely does. I was just, yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking. I just was pretty much asking did the MSFS have any special sauce, but it kind of sounds like what you're paying for is the organization of the actual education and actually the follow-through to the different things that you have versus by getting the MSFS, that there probably was something inside of that that couldn't be obtained from an outside source.

You can buy a whole lot of books for 20K, but I do appreciate your answer in that question. Thank you very much. It's the same exact question and problem that you face with any kind of college degree. You can – that favorite scene from Good Will Hunting where the guy is talking about you could have gotten – you got an education.

You could have gotten for a couple hundred bucks in late fees at the local library. The knowledge is freely available. So in looking at – the access to the information is freely available. It's not hard to find good information at all. But the key is to go – is to start and look.

Am I looking for the information that's applicable? In that case, going through a class is probably an inefficient way to learn when you're just simply looking for information on the case. Or are you looking for something that is going to have a broader benefit? A master's degree is going to open up opportunities for teaching and that was why I did it was because I didn't have to come out of pocket for it and I always thought it would be fun to be a college professor.

I said, "Well, if I can get a master's degree without coming out of pocket for me, that opens up the opportunity for me to potentially be a college professor if I ever wanted to." So never know. There's no reason not to. All right. Jeff in New York, go ahead and let us know what your question is please.

Hey, Joshua. First of all, just appreciate you taking my call and thanks for everything that you do. I found you about a year ago, just kind of mumbling through podcasts. And ever since I've been listening, definitely taking a closer look at the Phi community and kind of that side of things.

So it's definitely been a great thing to have access to all that you're doing. So thanks very much for that. My question is just related to kind of general housing strategy. I'm currently trying to pay off some debts and my dad is actually in the process of building his retirement home, but he's not going to live there for about probably about a year or so.

And he offered me the possibility to live there rent free probably for about six to 12 months. This would require a little bit of a commute on a daily basis, probably about an hour. I'm currently commuting really only about 30 minutes per se. I'm actually carless at the moment.

It would also necessitate purchasing a car. So I was thinking probably, you know, three to 5,000 out of pocket, just pay cash for something to do that. So I'm currently paying about 1,200 in rent, depending on the month. So just kind of wanted to see if, you know, the outlay of maybe five grand for a car was worth in the grand scheme, you know, that just that savings of, you know, potentially living six to 12 months for a year rent free and having that extra to be able to throw at my debt.

Are you single? I am, yes. How much debt do you have? About 35,000. And what's your income? 80,000. If you were to do this, do you think you could be out of debt in six to 12 months? I do. I'm currently kind of projecting probably about June of '18 I should be all done.

So if I was there that minimum, probably six to 12 months, I think it could be the vehicle to make that happen. What type of work do you do? I'm in technology, like operations type stuff. So you don't, I mean, you don't use your car for work. You could drive a cheap car.

It's not a big deal. You're not in the road. You don't have image to maintain, et cetera. No, definitely not. Not the lawyer doctor stigma. Great, great. It sounds pretty cool to me. I would probably pursue it. If you can do it on six to 12 months, to me it sounds really ideal in this context.

It's probably of help to your dad to have the place looked after. Empty houses are not great things, period. And so it's probably of help to him. So you don't have to feel like a total freeloader. He wants to help you out during this phase. So it's a win for him that he gets to provide some help for you.

So I see that as being good. An hour commute, to go from 30 minutes of a commute to a one hour commute for the short term, a year's time to me sounds pretty, it doesn't sound terrible. Obviously, shorter commutes are always, are often better and more valuable. But for you, you could put the time to good use.

Many of ways to put the time to good use, and we're talking about a temporary time period, and it's a very direct path to saving $10,000 to $12,000 if we called it on the year timeline. And if you have the timeline to where that would work out with your income to be able to be debt free at the end of the year, I think that would be well worth pursuing.

I would buy a cheap car, a little Toyota Corolla, a Honda Accord, Toyota Camry, something like that. I'd spend a couple thousand dollars. And the great thing about doing that, if you do that, is depending on what you need after you're done, if you buy an inexpensive car, you can sell it again if you want to go car free at the end of the year.

You can sell it again and basically get all your money out of it and have a fine little commuter car. So I think I would, yeah, I would. I think that sounds like a really ideal scenario. Is there any reason why you don't think that would be a good idea?

No, I think really the only thing would be the silly fear of missing out, I suppose. It's a little bit out in the sticks, so to say. But other than that, I think it's probably good to dig me out of the hole. And I think the other thing you hit on very well is the resale potential of the car.

I was definitely thinking something like a Camry or an Accord. So to be able to get three quarters of what I paid for it out of it, I think, makes that outlay a little bit more reasonable in the situation. You got to compare it to what's the scenario that would be – what's a different scenario that you have.

So right now you're spending $1,000 or $1,200 a month on rent and you're able to get by without a car. Well, could you spend – if you got a roommate, or could you find a place to rent a room and a house for $400 a month and get by without a car?

If so, then you calculate what that would look like over the course of a year. But to go from what you're paying now to zero rent and I don't know – would your dad pay the – cover the utilities or would you need to pay for those as well?

I think he was willing to do that, yes. So when you get rid of utilities, that could also be really compelling because $100 a month in electricity, things like that, you could probably get rid of your – any kind of internet needs. Just use your cell phone and tether when you need internet at home and you're going to be at work a lot of times.

So you can get rid of any kind of cable or unless it comes in the house. You can cut your utility bills down hugely and so the savings here with having a hookup like a family connection could wind up in your benefit closer to say $1,300, maybe $1,400 a month by the time you add up the coverage for utilities.

So as a temporary thing, I think it helps your dad. It helps you as a temporary thing. I think it sounds like a great idea. Great. I appreciate the insight, Joshua. For sure. All right. Haleshia, we're going to come to you in just a moment. Before I do though, sponsor of today's show is HelloFresh.

HelloFresh, you've heard me talk about it before. It's one of these boxed up meals scenarios where they send you a box with all kinds of different meals in it. They send you it once a week if you want. You can choose the number of meals, all kinds of different scenarios and the food comes all in the box, in a refrigerated box.

The food comes with all of the portions measured out and step-by-step instructions where you can follow the recipe card and just pull the box out of the fridge, follow the recipe card and basically 30 minutes, you've got the food in the oven and you can get it on the table shortly thereafter.

I do a lot of the cooking in my house and I have a problem that I cook from massive portions. So I do a lot of the cooking and always have these just crazy amounts of food in the house. But it frustrates my wife deeply because for her, she has to come to the refrigerator and see mountains and mountains of stuff and figure out what to do at 5 o'clock in the evening.

We try to do a better job with meal planning but it still seems to be one of the areas where we constantly – well, our aspiration is higher than our realization. HelloFresh solves some of those problems for us. It gives you a little box, you can pop the box out.

She loves that. She doesn't have to think. She just grabs the recipe and puts it together and boom, done. Now, John, you said – we're talking before I hit record on the call. You said that your wife loves it as well. Is that right? Yeah, that's correct. Yeah, she's tried a few of them.

She likes HelloFresh. What does she like about it? What's her favorite thing? Is it like with my wife where she grabs the simplicity of it or what specifically does she like about it? I mean, everything is measured out and if you need an onion or a small onion, they give you one small onion or one little vial of olive oil or whatever.

So it's kind of like having a little sous chef there that's already done all the work for you and you just kind of assemble everything. I think the biggest thing she likes though is that the recipes don't tend to repeat. I don't know if they repeat even in a year.

So it kind of gets her to cook things she wouldn't normally cook and have the ability to cook so without some research online, it's a subscription service so it puts it all right there in front of you and it's ready to go. Yeah, it takes some of the planning and puts it back in your cell.

Certainly not as cheap as what we do. You go to Costco and the restaurant supply store where we get most of our groceries. It's not as cheap but it still comes out to less than $10 a meal and when you've got someone else that can create the recipes for you, it's a really great in-between scenario.

It's cheaper and more fun than dining out good quality food as well. So go to HelloFresh.com, sign up if you've never tried it. Try it out, a simple starter subscription, save $30 with the coupon code RPF30. Again that's $30 off your initial subscription with the coupon code RPF30 and then let me know how you like it.

All right, Halesha, did I say it right? Halesha in Colorado, welcome to the show. Yes, thank you. I'm really excited to be here. Let us know what's on your mind and let's see how I can serve you today, please. My mom's pretty sick and she has some pretty hefty medical expenses coming up.

I was wondering just from my financial standpoint on what I should really look into or there's some creative ways to finance this that maybe I haven't thought about. What kind of sick is she? Cancer sick. What's her medical prognosis? Probably going to die in the next year. And is she married?

Yes. Okay. Financially what is your mom's financial situation? Not great. Deprived of my parents. Is she – as far as her – how old is she and what insurance coverage does she have? She is 67 and she has Medicare. Okay. So just base Medicare and no supplemental insurance? My understanding is yes.

Okay. Do you feel that she is receiving through the Medicare system? Is she receiving the type of treatment that she needs or is there a need for her to get treatment that's not currently covered? I'm not really sure yet. All right. So, I'm sorry to hear she's doing so poorly.

So there are a couple of different ways to answer it. Let's talk about kind of the most aggressive protective scenario. Your mom's husband, do they have assets together that they own together? Not really. Not at the moment. Okay. So basically I'm getting the impression they don't have a lot of money or a lot of assets.

Is that right? That is correct. Okay. So – and then is he working right now? No. He's like 83. Okay. So he's caring for her. Are they their sources of income? Is it just basically Social Security or do they have any other types of pension arrangements established for themselves?

I think there's a pension as well for my dad. Okay. So let's start with kind of the most aggressive financial planning scenario. Essentially there are two people that need to be cared for in this context. The number one most important is your mother and her medical care and her medical needs.

So that is of primary importance and you've got to make sure that she gets the care. But you also have to make sure that your father is cared for as well. And because their finances are joined, there's – we have a duty of care for both of them and we have a financial duty of care for both of them as well.

So as a simple example, let's say they had a million dollars in a bank account. If they were going to use all million dollars of that bank account on her medical care, that might be the right thing to do. But we have to recognize the fact that that will leave him destitute, financially destitute.

Now in your situation, since your parents don't have significant assets, we're basically talking about income. So she's going to accrue – she hasn't already. She's probably going to accrue major medical bills that she doesn't have the money to pay. So the first thing is to approach this almost like you would approach bankruptcy planning and to say what sources of income do they have and how do we protect them?

Social security income is protected from the claims of creditors and so can be pension income from the claims of creditors. So it's important that you sit down and if your dad is receiving a pension payment from a work pension, then you want to make sure that's segregated and that's not becoming a claim – that's not going into a joint account.

I just want to start to provide some protection for that from the potential future claims of her creditors. As she accrues medical expenses, as she goes forward with her treatment and as she has the medical expenses, all of those medical expenses, you want to work to make sure that they all stay in her name and in her name alone.

And what will happen is if she dies, say six months from now she dies and she owes $300,000 of medical expenses, then her estate will stand good for her debts. But it's likely that she won't have much of an estate. So do your parents own a house together? Not at the moment, no.

So they're renting. So basically anything that she owns will stand good for what she owes. So if she does have any personal assets or any financial assets, when she dies, if she dies prematurely, if she dies prematurely, then anything that she owns, her bank accounts and any personal property, things like that, would basically go to stand good for her debts.

If she doesn't have a lot of money and if she doesn't have a lot of property, then the creditors will just simply not be paid because you are not going to inherit her debts. Your dad is not going to inherit her debts. So those medical expenses just simply won't be paid.

So it's important to be defensive in your approach and it's important for you to be defensive in making sure that you don't sign up to become – that you don't agree to stand for the medical expenses and it's important that to the best degree possible that your dad not agree to be liable for any medical expenses.

So that in a worst-case scenario, if she dies in the next six months from now or 12 months from now, that those medical expenses unfortunately simply won't be paid. What many people try to do is you want to obviously acknowledge the goodness of the people who are seeking to – providing medical care for her and who may never get paid.

They know that that going in, they know that they may never get paid. So you obviously want to do anything you can to satisfy that moral obligation of the debt but you don't have to take on to yourself the financial obligation. That's the basic approach financially. Now the key thing is back to the care.

What about the care? Oftentimes what you'll find, especially with Medicare, is there are some treatments that Medicare is going to cover and then there may be some things that Medicare isn't going to cover. So you've got to figure out how – if you're going to do something that the insurance doesn't pay for, how can you do that?

How can it be paid for? How could you do it? Knowing clearly that your mom – that likely speaking, the people who are providing medical care for her are not going to be paid except what the insurance pays out and knowing that you're not going to inherit any of her debts, then you and the family members need to decide about the things that aren't covered by insurance that you can do.

Oftentimes there will be ways for you to support and you can say, "Well, we'll pay for this other treatment over here or we'll negotiate for this experimental thing," et cetera, and you may choose to pay for that out of your own resources. But basically what I would do is just talk to everybody, make sure that everybody knows the situation, knows the circumstances, knows your mom's lack of financial resources, and talk to them.

Make sure while you're going – meaning that oftentimes they may go ahead and agree to provide care even though they know that they're not going to get paid in the long run. Finally, make sure that her income is being used to meet her living expenses as best as possible.

So prioritize the payment of her rent, the food, the things that she needs, not paying the medical expenses. Medical expenses are just going to have to pile up until they can be dealt with. Okay. Thank you. Any further clarifying? Is that a good start? I think it's a pretty good start.

I didn't know that the debt wouldn't be transferred. Right, right. So that's really good to know because I think it's going to be pretty crushing. Yeah, it is. It always is. I mean it's not uncommon to have a million, a couple of million dollars of debt especially if there have been advanced treatments and things like that.

So it is important that you know, yes, nobody will inherit your mom's debt. You will not inherit her debt. Your dad will not inherit her debt. Nobody will inherit her debt. So if she dies prematurely, she dies six months from now, nobody is going to be responsible for those payments.

So nobody is going to be responsible for that. You're not going to get any of her assets because her estate, the assets of her estate need to be sold and disposed of to pay her creditors if she dies. But no one is going to inherit the debt. So let me just make a quick planning tip for those who are in a situation where the parents have more money.

If you're in a situation like this and let's say mom and dad have – they own a house together and the house has $300,000 of equity and maybe mom has an IRA or a 401K account, things like that. This is where you need to sit down and do some good defensive planning, basically elder care planning or bankruptcy planning and you want to make sure that you don't drain the assets that are needed for the spouse in order to pay for the medical expenses.

So if I have an IRA with a half a million dollars in it and I need medical care and I can't – my wife is depending on the $500,000 in my IRA for her retirement years. If I'm undergoing a cancer diagnosis and cancer treatment, then it's very important that I not drain the IRA to pay the hospital bills because then what's my wife going to do when I die?

It's much more important that I keep the money in the IRA. The IRA has protection from the claims of creditors. It is a bank – it's a judgment-proof asset. You cannot be – I can't be sued by the hospitals and then have access to the IRA and the IRA would pass to my wife by beneficiary designation.

So we cannot spend the money in our IRA. I can make sure that that money is set aside for her at my death to make sure that she's covered for retirement and then if I die prematurely, then my estate will just simply not be able to pay the hospital bills.

So you've got to be defensive there and make sure that the parties of all people are covered. You want to make sure the medical providers are paid for as much as money is available but you've got to make sure that all of the other parties that need to be protected are protected as well.

So hopefully that helps. All right, John, you did my hello fresh ad for me. Now I'll answer your question. What's up? John R. Reilly: Yeah, no problem. Well, first I just wanted to say I appreciate all the advice you gave to Halesha. That's all good stuff to know and maybe the second caller wants to take some lessons from Halesha's situation and possibly move in this dad's house and then he might get another year or two of rent-free living with his dad after that.

I know you've used up like 99% of your time with your in-person time with your parents after you leave high school. You might want to take advantage of that. But yeah, my question was pretty mundane after Halesha's situation but I was just kind of curious about during the last Q&A you had mentioned a couple tips on how you kind of digitized some receipts that had the heat ink on them and I've fallen trap to that, you know, saving receipts forever go back and they're invisible ink.

It's like disappearing ink on them. And it kind of made me wonder about your system in general and overall about how and your decision process for which receipts and financial paperwork in general that you keep around just the whole finances of life and somewhat high level how you organize or how you decide maybe like a decision process for how you decide to keep certain things in certain ways.

I have a couple apps that I use for scanning but they always seem to be in 10 different places, you know, just getting it all in one place and OCR and recoverable when you want to get a certain information would be interesting for me to hear. Sure. So let's start simple and here are the simplest ways to do it.

Most people don't need anything fancy. They don't need anything digital. They just need a simple file folder and unfortunately many people, their lives are so disorganized they don't have a file folder. So the first thing that I recommend is anytime you have something or you buy something, just establish a standalone file folder.

Depending on the type of thing that it's going to be, a simple manila folder can work well or oftentimes I like to use and I've acquired a bunch of them for free. I like to use these little basically like Tyvek envelopes that have a cover that you can wrap the little bungee cord around and that allows you to organize things that are related in a very simple way.

But at least a file folder. So usually for most people, there are only a few things that need to be tracked. A simple example would be a car. If I buy a car, the first thing I do when I buy a car is I create a file folder for it and in that file folder, I keep anything related to that car.

Initial, bill of sale, the title, initial paperwork, registration paperwork, copies of anything, copies of repair records, etc. If you just simply have one file folder that's immediately made out for that car, then you always have a place to put things and it's easy to take and to put things into it.

Another thing that I do is I always keep a notebook with something and a simple notebook that I can write in. A simple pad or any kind of small notebook and keep a log. A log of the mileage, the log of the things that are done. So when I – a year ago, I bought a camper van and the first thing I did was I put a notebook in the camper van with a pen attached to it and I use that for keeping notes.

When I take the car to the mechanic, then I write down what I did, what I fixed, etc. The mileage, the date, all of that. So I have all the information laid aside. By simply having a place to put it, that lowers the resistance that we have to keeping good records and there's no need for complex digital solutions.

In general, you can just have a piece of paper, a notebook, etc. The issue that we mentioned with regard to the fading receipts is pretty rare with most things that are in use in life. Your mechanic generally is going to give you a printed paper printout from his accounting software and then there will be a heat receipt on the back of it that was just simply the credit card slip.

So you can look at it and say, "Well, is this important?" Chances are it's probably not important. You can probably continue on and you'll have everything you need. If you do that with – same thing with your house. You put your title records all in one place and then if you have more, a lot of people will go ahead and create a binder for their home appliances, things like that.

I try to save almost nothing that can be easily found online but I do try to save paperwork for things that can't be. So to me, the user manual is not nearly so important as the actual purchase confirmation so that I have the information. So low tech is perfectly fine and works really, really well.

If you need to preserve the receipts, the simplest low tech way to do that is going to just be to copy them. I think in this context, a lot of times people have a copier at work. Certainly you don't want to run your own thousand booklet production job on your boss's time and paper but ask your boss and one or two receipts copied a month is probably not going to be a big deal or you can buy a home copy machine that's very inexpensive.

That would be the most basic level and most people would be well served by simply having that done. Now you can go up from there and you mentioned you can use a scanning app and start to scan information. I've done that. And does it work? Yeah, I think it can work.

You can set up an Evernote notebook or some non-Evernote equivalent. You can set up an Evernote notebook for your – the car, et cetera and then you can just simply scan each receipt. I have found that using the scanning app on the phone is good for every now and then but it's not good for consistent things.

But if you only have a few pieces of property, et cetera, then I think using a scanning app can be fine. I think you should either choose to do all paper or in essence all digital and that lowers the resistance because I've found that having half and half didn't really work.

At this point, I use actually a scanner and I use a pretty fancy scanner. The one that I use is – and it's expensive. It's 400-something bucks if you buy it new. But I use a scanner called a ScanSnap iX500 made by Fujitsu and it is probably the – it's a pretty Cadillac scanner that is appropriate for all kinds of different things.

It's a duplex scanner which means it will scan front and back of any document simultaneously. It's very fast. I think it's rated for 25 pages a minute and it can be used to scan a variety of media. It can scan receipts. It can scan – it can scan receipts.

It can scan papers. It can scan stacks of random things. And so what I have done is more and more, I've gone ahead and committed to doing things largely digital. And so I use it for records and I keep just a simple foldering system. I prefer not to back things up in the cloud for greater security.

I have good backup systems that aren't – so I'm not worried about the cloud on the backup. So I just keep a foldering system and a file system in for each of my assets. So if there is a – if it's my car or if it's a house or something like that, I make a separate folder for it and then I scan all of the documents into it and I just simply – I don't worry too much about organization.

In general, you can get so bogged down trying to organize something perfectly that there's no need for it. For the average car, if you have 20 or 30 files in a folder, you don't need to do any major organization. You can look through those and figure out when you replace the transmission fluid if you have to and it only takes a few minutes.

So just simply setting up a simple file, simple foldering system. What I do is I just simply use a dated system. So for any file, I use a date system that will be sortable on date of year, month, day. So as I – if we record this in 2017, it would be 20170713 and then the name of what it was and a quick description in the title.

The fancy scanner like the Fujitsu ScanSnap makes it so easy to scan these things, put the file name in, drop it into that, that it makes it super, super simple. So I love it and that's what I use. So I organize things around the asset. If it's a home purchase, just organize things there.

Then if it's financial records, then that should be organized in the accounting software. Either use – I use YNAB for personal stuff. You can organize things effectively enough in YNAB. I use hashtags. So I have a Toyota Sienna minivan. So #ToyotaSienna, if anything is related to that. That makes it easily searchable.

And then if it's more complex than that, then you can go ahead and use bookkeeping software. So something like QuickBooks makes it very simple for you to associate a scanned receipt with the actual file. I found that for me, I struggled with it being cheap for a long time of not wanting to get a scanner.

Finally, I just said, "No, I've got to have a good scanner," and I use it for basically everything. I use my ScanSnap for – I scan all my books. For example, when I read a book, I like to read books in paper and mark them up. But then at the end of it, I destroy them.

I pull the bindings apart, toss them in the ScanSnap. In probably about 10 minutes, I can scan the book. That way I have a permanent digital archive of it. I don't have to keep the paper version of it. I have a permanent digital archive that contains all my notes, all of my emphasis, et cetera.

It does color. It does black and white. So I find it really useful for that. And then also records. You can just put stacks of records together and do it. So I have found that having a good scanner has been well worth it for me to simplify things. So one of those systems can be created, and I think those are just – that's how I do it, and those are my simple ideas for it.

How do you do it, John? And what ideas do you have? John Cramer No, I appreciate that. Those are all good ideas. I think you've kind of helped me isolate – what my problem is, it's a balance between paper and tech and then a balance between asset filing versus sort of like a time – you said you primarily keep it by asset, and then within that asset, you have kind of a dated structure.

I kind of tend to go all or nothing one way or the other. So right now I'm in this in-between stage where I'm trying to digitize everything, scanning in religiously as I get the item, and then I put it into a – just every six months I start a new folder and put everything I purchase, all receipts, all records, whatever, into that linearly.

They might get mixed up again, but you can sort through them. And then what I've been doing on the digital side is just hoping it has OCR and you can search for it that way, but OCR isn't perfect, and even things you're trying to remember that thing that you're trying to search, maybe it's not really listed that way on a receipt or a paperwork.

And I've been getting by pretty decently with that, but overall it's just – it's kind of disconnected. And to your point about the car stuff, I think that's one of my major pain points is there's a separation between when I do the thing to the car and type a little email to myself to send it to myself, and then later I have to take that email and put it into my online spreadsheet where I keep track of all that stuff.

And that little disconnect is a big problem, because sometimes it doesn't happen or it happens very late or I don't get all the notes in. So just having a little tablet in each vehicle and going kind of low-tech on that I think is a – I think that's a good idea.

It keeps it where it needs to be. You generally don't need that information when you're away from your car. And even if you are away from your car, you're usually not that far away from your car if you're doing this other work at home and trying to do planning.

So I think that'll help a lot, just with a simple notebook. Low-tech on that will help. So – Yeah, for the uninitiated, OCR stands for optical character recognition, and it's the function that allows you to scan a document or take a picture of it and have the computer translate that image into textual recognition.

This is what most – many of us use Evernote in some capacity. This is what Evernote does. When you take a picture of a paper and it says on it "radical personal finance," it allows you to come back later and search your database for "radical" and find those instances of it.

My experience, John, having – being the master of creating complex systems and then watching them fail, I have learned that it's simple – it's important not to kind of overstress. As a simple example, I don't save receipts for anything except business expenses. I don't save them. What am I going to need a receipt for on something?

Or possibly a big ticket item certainly is a reason to do it. But I don't need to save my receipts from the grocery store. I don't need to save any of those things. All I need there is to know basically how much am I spending on a monthly basis on food.

And so as long as I have some record of that and I do, either checkbook register or program like you need a budget, radicalpersonalfinance.com/ynab, radicalpersonalfinance.com/ynab, you need a budget. As long as I'm using something like that, then I have the category that I need. And so simple is important.

Before you design a system for something, it's most important just to eliminate steps and say, "Am I ever going to need this?" And in general, I found that as long as I get rid of stuff and I simplify, I don't need to save all these emails. I don't need to save all of these receipts.

I don't need to save all these records. I'm probably never going to need it. And if I ever did need it to save on $100, well, $100 was the price I paid for having a simpler life. Similar things like saving boxes for – I bought a new monitor for my computer.

Well, I'm not going to save the box for it just in case I ever need it. If I ever need it, it just – it adds too much complexity. So one or the other, either paper or digital works really well. And if you're digital, then you have the tools.

So if you have a scanner, then that makes the tool simple enough and then you had to create the setup, set up the filing system, figure out where is it going to be stored, how is the data going to be encrypted so it's protected, and how is it going to be backed up.

You've got to set that up and then follow through across the board. But in general, for most people, it's not that big a deal. If you just had a file folder for your house that you put everything – a receipt in for everything in your house, chances are you'd have most of the info needed.

And then if you ever need to go back through and look at housing expenses, you just pull up that category in your accounting software and you cross-reference it and you can come close enough to solve the records needs. I do – I would say this. I struggled for years with trying to use the phone as a scanner.

I was an early adopter. I always used the JotNot scanning app. JotNot Pro is what I used. It worked great on my phone for years with my iPhone. But it is nothing like having an actual scanner. And today, if I had the choice, I'd get the cheapest smartphone or get a dumb phone and get a scanner rather than trying to integrate it into the phone.

Scanning with a phone is so frustrating to do because of all the problems with now how do I get the document onto the hard drive, how do I name it, et cetera. So I highly recommend pick up a good quick duplex scanner and it's worth it. That's a good tip.

Thank you. I appreciate that. For sure. Someday I should probably do more and try to organize the system better. But that's what I do. All right. Finally, Andy, you're up. Welcome to the show. Let me know your question, please. Hi, Joshua. I just wanted to maybe kind of get a little more detail on some of the things you've said about insurance purchasing in the past and then your opinion on whether there is any value in what that is of having a local agent versus not having a local agent.

Okay. Tell me more. So specifically with the agent thing, I don't want to be necessarily asking brand recommendations. I'll try not to say brands unless you want me to. But I've always had car insurance, home insurance, all that through a local agent, you know, a person that I knew that I went in and I sat down and talked with.

And I've never used any of my insurance, but I've always been happy with the agents. They seem knowledgeable and helpful and willing to go over things with me. And I've recently compared just car insurance with some of the online you can buy, you know, direct online. And I could save a couple hundred dollars just on car insurance, you know, and not counting homeowners and all the other things I have insurance on.

And one of my big hangups on that is the idea of leaving a local agent and not having that person I could go talk to. And just wondered if, in your opinion, there's value to that or, you know, kind of what your thoughts on that. Yeah. All right. So I understand more.

So I think the value is good. So it's going to depend on the type of insurance. Let's start with property and casualty insurance, car insurance, homeowners insurance, et cetera. I think there is value in a local agent if you can find one that meets your needs and does a good job.

I think there's also value sometimes in working with companies that don't have local agents. And I don't know of a grand way to understand the difference. My experience was I grew up – my dad was always a USAA member. And USAA is an insurance company that only does business with military personnel.

And they have a significant degree of brand loyalty because in most things they've done a good job. And then – so I just got – I got my car insurance with USAA because I was on my dad's policy for years and I got my own. I was like, "Well, I'll just stick with USAA." And so it wasn't – in general, if my dad had done his business with a local state farm agent, then I probably would have just gone with the local state farm agent just like many people do.

And most of us, that's the biggest influence. I was always comfortable not having somebody local because I just grew up never having someone local. Same thing with local banking. I've never banked with a local bank. I've had a count here and there. But as far as primary banking, I've never had a bank that I could walk into and work with a banker.

And so I'm – but I'm a point – I'm at a generational approach where I'm comfortable not having that. I think the first thing that matters is whenever possible to work with a company that's going to be excellent for the type of insurance that you're looking for. So in property and casualty insurance, there are two mutual insurance companies that have often had good ranks.

One was USAA. Another that's often been leading is a company called Amica Mutual. They often are well-ranked in terms of their customer service. And when it comes to actually filing a claim, I've seen personally with my experience with USAA on car insurance claims how nice it is to work with a company that just seems to want to do the right thing and care for their policy owners.

I'm biased whenever possible to work with a mutual insurance company as compared to a stock insurance company because I have had experience formerly working with Northwestern Mutual that there's just – the culture was different, that there was more of a sense of camaraderie. So I'd rather bank with a credit union than with a profit-seeking bank.

I'd rather have my insurance with a mutual insurance company than with a stock insurance company. So to me, that's where I start. The problem is what do you do if insurance is not available? When I owned a home a few years ago, USAA does not write coverage for houses in Florida because of the – just the hurricane situation.

The whole Florida homeowners insurance market is a disaster. It's been – it's a disaster. The government regulators have screwed the whole thing up by – and destroyed free market competition. So basically we have the state-run option and we have a few startup local insurance companies that basically cancel your policy every year and you shop for insurance every year or two.

So in that context, I had no idea where to start and I called company after company that was national. No, sorry. We don't do business in Florida. The only thing I had to do – the only place I had to start was to work with a local agent because there was value in that specialized localized knowledge.

So in that case, the specialized localized local knowledge trumped the value of any particular brand name and I worked with these no-name insurance companies that I had never heard of that were local that I had no confidence in from a customer service representative but I was required to have insurance and that was – they were the only people that could offer it.

So it's very subjective. I think you are better served by working with an agent. Here's how the insurance works. A lot of times you can buy insurance directly from the national company or you can work with somebody locally who can write it with the national company and your actual premium payment is going to be identical between those two.

But if you work with somebody local, you're going to have somebody who can sit down and integrate your coverage and who can review them. And as your financial situation is more complex, that's more and more valuable. You want to make sure that your liability limitations on your car insurance are properly aligned with your homeowner's insurance and you want your umbrella liability policy to go right on top of those so you don't have any gaps.

You're not going to get that with a customer service rep just on the phone. So if you can work with somebody locally that's going to be knowledgeable, why not? I'd rather do that. The other thing – comment I've made was something like life insurance. Same thing applies with life insurance.

If you work with a local agent, you're going to pay exactly the same premium as working with somebody that you find on the internet. Banner Life Insurance Company charges the same premium to a 45-year-old male non-tobacco of somebody who buys it through a website, lifeinsurance.com or whatever the website of the day is versus somebody who works with the local insurance agent.

It's just a matter of who gets the commission, the life insurance agent locally or the website. Well, after spending years writing life insurance, if your premium is going to be for your term insurance is going to be $600 a year, my commission from Banner Insurance is going to be $500 to sit down with you.

I'll come and sit down with you for a couple of hours and work with you in exchange for earning a $500 commission and I'll give you good advice on your life insurance program and we'll help you figure it out. It's going to be a lot less frustrating than a national website.

So I think there is value in working with a local agent. There is value in working with somebody who's an expert in your area and a newly trained customer service rep is generally not going to be able to provide the same service as somebody you can sit down in their office with, especially if someone's a member of the community, a long-term member of the community.

But it's good to keep those people honest and it's good to price things yourself. So if you go online and you do a pricing and you price things out and you quote your insurance with Geico, go down to your local agent and say, "Hey, I quoted it with Geico.

What can you do?" My experience has been I've never was in a situation when I was a local insurance agent. I was never in a situation where I was ever scared of an online quote because they didn't have anything that I don't have. They didn't have anything, any access to somebody that I didn't have.

And even if I was going to be a little bit more, I knew why it was going to be a little bit more and I could just say, "Hey, here's why this company that I'm recommending is a little bit more and that's – and here's why I would recommend it." I don't try to buy the cheapest insurance I can get.

Not that I'm opposed to it, it doesn't matter. But when you need insurance payment on something like your house or your car, you don't want to get into a fight with the insurance company. You want your claim paid. And a lot of times that's going to have to do with the quality of the company.

All right. That's really helpful. I think that basically answers that part of my question and I think you were hinting at kind of the second part. So I've always worked with basically a company representative of a specific company, such and such insurance company office. Am I correct that there are also insurance agents out there that are more like – I don't know if freelancer is the right term, but I could go to and they could say, "Well, independent, yes.

Here's the rate you can get from this company and that company and because you're such and such, this company would be better for you. Is that an option and is that a better option in your opinion?" So I think the reason people have these questions like you is because you probably feel a personal loyalty to the person that you're working with and you don't want to appear like you're being disloyal by talking about quotes and things like that.

I always have that personal hesitation. I don't want to disappoint my friends. I don't want to cause problems for the people that I'm working with. But I would encourage you that this person is a professional and they work for you. So ask the questions. There's no reason why you can't ask a question.

From having come from the sales world and insurance sales, I always knew that if I was going to lose a case or if I were going to lose a customer, I wanted to know why because probably I know more about it than my customer did. But I would be so frustrated if somebody – you get a replacement notice if someone is replacing your policy in life insurance and similar things I'm sure with property and casualty insurance.

I would always be frustrated if I saw – look, I placed so-and-so with a good company and I look down and I get a replacement notice for the policy that I sold them that was appropriate to them and now we're going with a piece of junk company that's $5 a month cheaper.

I can sell somebody on why the $5 a month is more valuable and be right about it. So I think you should always talk with the people that you're working with and tell them what you're doing. Tell them, "Oh, I'm quoting – if you're working with a local legacy company where their agent is a captive agent," here's the terminology, called a captive agent where they can only write business with that specific company.

Tell them, "Hey, I'm quoting my insurance around. I've gotten quotes from so-and-so. Why should I stay with you?" Just ask them the question. They're professionals. They can handle it. They're big boys and girls. They can handle it. It's always a good idea to collect quotes. It's always a good idea to talk to an independent agent and inquire with a local company and say, "Hey, can we quote a few different companies?" It's always a good idea.

The trick is in order to make it worthwhile, go back to the professionals that you're working with. Tell them your competitive quote because often there are a lot of unethical people who will quote something but they're quoted under different terms. Let's take this example. You come in and your legacy company that you're with right now, you have a million dollars of liability coverage but you go online and they quote you at $100,000 of liability coverage.

Well, of course your policy is cheaper. It's cheaper because it has different terms and there's almost no insurance, especially property and casualty and many kinds of life insurance, disability insurance, et cetera. You can't compare it one to another. About the only thing you can do that is compare it with a straight 20-year term life insurance policy.

You can't quote on price. Everything else is based on features and the agent needs to see the quote. So go and get the quotes. Get it from the legacy company where you have a good relationship with. Get it from the independent company where they're quoting with a couple of people and then compare them one another.

Show each other the quotes and ask them, "Why should I stick with it?" Then be open to their answer. Cheaper is not always better. You often get what you pay for in most things, including in insurance coverage. Okay. So, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I guess what you're saying earlier when you're talking about the local agent versus the website, I guess my thought had been when you go with a company that is largely web-based and doesn't have local offices, the fact that there is two or three people sitting in a building 40 hours a week would be a big reason why online company A could be cheaper than brick and mortar company B.

Would it be reasonable to expect that that's true or not? I think absolutely. There are a lot of companies that have made their business working online and because it's cheaper, they can offer cheaper policies. But this very much depends on the type of insurance and on what's available. I'll give you an example.

I bought a motorhome a year or two ago. I've since sold it this year and I needed insurance for it. Well, I paid cash for it and I didn't care about having the value of it covered. I just wanted some strict liability insurance that would allow me to drive it legally.

But all I cared about was inexpensive liability insurance. I didn't need big coverages, et cetera. I just needed inexpensive liability insurance so that I could drive the thing on the road legally. I quoted it with USAA and my premiums came out to like $60, $70 a month that they quoted for my motorhome.

Progressive is well-known for having some of the cheapest insurance coverage for RVs. So I quoted it with Progressive and they gave me just simple liability insurance for $12 a month. So I was able to have the coverage for $12 a month. Well, I couldn't see any reason or benefit why I wouldn't just go with the cheapest place in that one because I wanted something that was very simple and I wanted something – I was just going for strict liability coverage.

So in that case, Progressive was a company that they're known for providing cheap RV insurance. That's a segment of the market that they've gone after. So you want to work with them for RV insurance. That's very different than something else. Insurance companies all have a different market segment where they want to be competitive.

Another example, I'm just using companies that I know where I can speak to because of personal experience. There are – like USAA does homeowners insurance in some places but there are certain kinds of houses that USAA doesn't want to have and sometimes they want high-end houses. Sometimes they want low-end houses.

So each company with something that's peculiar to a property in casualty, each company will choose this is the type of person that we want as an insured and they'll often price their policies out of the market for someone else. So that's where you need an expert if possible who can look and say, "Do you fall into one of these situations or are you buying a commodity product?" And there's no general way to answer it other than research.

There are only specific ways of application. One more example to build my point. I mentioned a moment ago that about the closest thing that comes to a commodity product is term life insurance, simple level term life insurance. In many ways, a 10-year level term life insurance company from company A is the same as company B is the same as company C.

There are a few differences but it's as close to a commodity as you can get in the life insurance business. That applies if you're healthy and you don't smoke. But it doesn't apply if you smoke cigars. If you smoke cigars, you immediately go into a question, "Well, how many cigars do you smoke?" And there are some companies where if you smoke over a certain number of cigars, they're going to give you tobacco rates.

There are other companies where you can smoke an unlimited number of cigars but as long as you don't smoke cigarettes, you can get non-tobacco rates. And so it's only going to be an experienced life insurance agent who's going to know that answer and you can't know it as a consumer by reading a website.

The teaser website at lifeinsurance.com is going to say, "A 45-year-old healthy male can get insurance for $15 a month." But it's only the agent who's going to know, "Well, how many cigars do you smoke?" In that case, I need to put you over here with Prudential because they're cheaper.

They're not $15 a month. It's going to be $17 a month but it's non-tobacco rates. If we applied with the company that you saw the advertisement for, it'd be $30 a month. Same thing with anytime there's health risks. Every company has something that they've chosen. So if somebody has a history of heart disease or history of cancer or they've had certain medical conditions or they have diabetes or hypertension, that's where the expert pays off.

So I don't know how to define that for the layperson in advance and say, "Always use online or always use local." I do know that you should try both or all and constantly shop your coverages but tell the professionals what you're doing and let them work to earn your business.

Okay. That's really helpful. So I think the advice I'm hearing is just, you know, if I'm looking to understand whether I'm getting good value and whether there's better value to be had, maybe get a few online quotes for especially things like auto insurance that are heavy online and then try to find a independent insurance agent in my area and just go to them and get a couple quotes from them and then take that back and compare with the legacy agent that I've been working with.

Is that a good summary of your advice? Right. Don't discount somebody from a large company. Don't discount them for two reasons. One, they have experience. They know what they're doing. There's a reason the company is large. They probably provide a good product at a good rate. They can't make it if they don't provide decent rates.

Now, you may not be in their target demographic so you might have an expensive policy from that company but there's probably a reason why they're big and they're well-known. Number two is just because an agent has a certain name of a company on their business card doesn't mean they don't have access to other companies.

As an example, when I was a Northwestern Mutual agent, my business card said Northwestern Mutual but I was licensed with and appointed with 30 or 40 different life insurance companies and I could write business with any of those companies. So it wasn't only Northwestern Mutual. I could write a banner policy.

I could write a prudential policy. I could write MetLife and often did. So sometimes you may not know that just because the person's business card that may or may not captive, the word captive agent means different things in different contexts. So that would be my answer. All right. Last question, Matthew.

You said that I'm going to come back to you and give you a chance to ask one more question. Before you said you wanted to talk about books. So the question you said you were going to ask me before I hit record was what three books would I take to – is this the Desert Island scenario?

Is that the question that you wanted to ask? Absolutely. Yeah. It's kind of a fun question to end on. If you could only have three books to read for the rest of your life, which three would you choose and why? Okay. So first, what would you pick? Because I got to think for a moment.

Do you have your answer figured out? Oh, that's a great question. Wow. That's tough. So I guess to frame it a little bit better would be in our current society because obviously if I were on a desert island, then I would want books applicable to that scenario to teach me how to live on a desert island.

So let's just say in our current scenario and in our current culture, given everything, if I can only have three books – let's see here. All right. So I'll take it because I've been kind of – I've been pondering it and if you have any ideas, you want to add in a moment.

So it's an interesting question and it's fun to talk about. And of course in a way, I would say I don't know. But I'm going to picture this as I fell off of an airplane into the desert island scenario. Because just for the constraint of it, here's conceptually what I would answer.

You need to have an idea of – we need to have something that would be helpful in the context of culture. How do you establish and build culture? You need to have something that would be helpful in terms of practical living. How do we keep ourselves alive? And we need to have something that would be helpful in the context of science and how do we approach – what's the basic outline of scientific knowledge?

What is the bare minimum? The first thing I think would be necessary in the desert island scenario is we would need a practical book on living. And so there are some very practical books on certain kinds of technology. How do you preserve food? How do you build shelter? How do you do these things?

Back to Basics, there's a book I've – I've had various editions over the years. But there's a well-known book. It's like Back to Basics. I used to love reading it when I was a kid. It's the kind of book that you need that gives you the practical instruction and the practical outline of where did you come – of what did you – it gives you the – again, practical structure and outline of how to preserve food, how to build a shelter, how to get water, things like that.

That would be the first basic approach. The second book that we would need would be something about like basic scientific knowledge. I have no idea what basic text would serve there. But we would need something that would try to bring together a record of mathematics and basic scientific knowledge in some way.

I've never seen kind of that type of book. But it would be interesting to stumble across it in some way. The third one would be culture. What do you build a culture on? Because obviously, if we're stuck somewhere, then we're going to build a culture. And so with that, rather obviously, I would insert the 66 books of the Protestant Bible.

The reason there is because you have history. Where did we come from? Why are we here? What's the meaning of this whole thing? That's what that answers. And then also the cultural construct. The early Puritan settlers to the United States of America used explicitly the Mosaic Law as their outline for their law and their tradition.

And that has produced – that fundamental foundation has produced the wealthiest, most successful culture in the history of the world. And so I'd want to build again on that foundation to understand the outline and understand that the precepts of where we come from, where are we going, and how do we organize a society because that is the fundamental conflict in the world today.

Once you have the basic needs of life established, once you have the basic – you have some shelter and you have some fire and you have some water to drink and some food to eat, then as human beings, we immediately start building civilization. We immediately start building culture. And so I'd want to understand what was it that has led to the most incredibly successful cultures in the history of the world because there have been thousands of different cultures that have developed but not all of them have survived and not all cultures are the same.

And so those would be the three books. I would choose a basic book on an outline of kind of how to live. I thought about adding to this like a book on architecture. I have some books. What's the guy's name? I can't remember his name. But I read this really interesting architecture guy who wrote these books not on the actual engineering or the design but more on the fundamental design and he talked about the design principles of architecture as applied to different climates.

I can't remember the name right now. I was trying to come up with it. But those would be kind of the things is we need – how do we live and how do we stay alive? We need – what basic knowledge do we need to build on, the mathematical and scientific precepts for us to be able to construct engineering projects and have them not fall down?

And then how do we build culture and civilization? Where do we come from? Where are we going and how do we build a strong culture with a moral fabric that's going to last the test of time? Because obviously if we wound up on this desert island, we probably failed.

So that's my answer. Very good. Very good. I will have to think about in that exact kind of that brainstorming session to see what I guess I would choose for the three books as well. That's an interesting outlook. One would go as far as saying that maybe you've actually thought about that before the question was raised today.

I have because I've thought about it a lot for a couple of reasons. Number one, because I'm a strong advocate of home education for children, I've thought a lot about what do we need to teach our children in order for them to be successful in the future. And in one way, this is probably the thing that I have most benefited from in thinking about home education and in considering how home education can be applied.

I've benefited from recognizing the fact that I have got to be responsible to know what my children need to know. And that's caused me to question my own education. If we just ship our kids off to a school that somebody else has designed, then as parents, we never think about what my children – we often don't think so much about what my children need to know.

It's kind of just handed to us. Well, here's the curriculum that you need and so go for it. This is what you need. Well, it's not so simple when you're going to take care of your own education, your own children's education. So I've really benefited from thinking about education and it's made me think what are the fundamental principles that my children need to know.

I'm convinced that it's absolutely impossible for me to teach my children the specific facts that are going to see them through the coming decades. Actually, almost all the facts supposedly – and I'm putting facts in air quotes – almost all the facts that I was taught in school, I've since debunked or we've since gone on with deeper knowledge.

If the atom was the smallest particle, some of us were taught this is the smallest particle of the cell. What is it now? It's like a cork or something. All of a sudden, no, wait a second. The cell goes smaller or there's this number of periodic elements but all of a sudden, it goes deeper.

That's been pretty stable. Those aren't good examples. But most of the facts that I was taught about history, Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492. Well, maybe he did and he had a huge impact but he was by no means the first European visitor to the United States and he didn't discover America in that context.

That was a very surface shallow thing that I was taught. So I've come to the conclusion that you can't really teach facts to children effectively enough where it's going to last them. What we need to do is teach principles and teach an approach. So there, by teaching my children orderly thinking or teaching them how to be disciplined people and disciplined researchers or teaching them how to approach problems or how to understand philosophy or how to trace a thread through, then it causes me to think about things at a deeper level.

So I've thought a lot about it there as I've tried to identify what do my children need to know to be successful in the world of 2050. The other thing that I've thought a lot about is one of my major concerns. I look at the US American society and in many ways, all I see is a society that's in collapse and I don't know the timing on it nor do I know what the impact of it looks like.

But it's very hard to escape the indicators of collapse. The US American empire has turned its attention inward. We've put up walls around the country to try to keep people out. That's a sign of an empire in decline rather than a sign of an empire in expansion. There's some significant financial constraints that are affecting the country and the culture and those will have significant impacts and I'm convinced they'll have impacts in my lifetime.

When I look at the underlying social fabric and the unrest that exists, there's a very small segment of the US American culture that's doing well, but I would say a majority of the US American culture is sick, I find it fundamentally sick. I read the most impactful book I read in January was Charles Murray's book, Coming Apart, and it kind of really opened my eyes to the measurable sociological collapse happening in our society today.

And so I've thought a lot about, "OK, what does that look like?" Because I don't personally see a scenario where – I don't think people are shooting each other in the streets. We're not going back to the Middle Ages and electricity is not going to go anywhere. But in terms of what is that?

And so I've kind of really approached it as a research project to say, "Well, what got us here? Am I committing a Golden Age fallacy and just think that, well, life was better before but now it's not? Or are there legitimate, objectively measurable things that I can look at and I can identify that are markers of success and markers of progress?

Where did we come from? What was the path that got us here? And then what are the philosophies that are warring in today's world?" Because religion and philosophy leads the culture. So what are the religious presuppositions of the culture? What's happening philosophically that's leading people to the actual actions of their daily life?

And so in thinking about that, it's caused me to do a lot of thinking about culture because how do you change it? I'm very concerned about how do we adjust and change culture, not on a macro scale. I can't do anything about a broad scale. But at the margin, how can I make a little bit of an impact in my children's lives and in my family's lives and in my neighbor's lives and in my community?

How can I adjust and get off the crazy train and stay on the train that leads to prosperity and stability of society? So you got me going. I didn't mean to go into all that. But yes, I have thought a little bit about it. No, that's great. And to be honest, I can't speak for the entire RPF audience, but that seems like a great future outline for a particular show and get into specific examples.

And I think that would be really interesting to kind of hear the deeper impact in that in the specific examples. Now, here's the short version because I can't do it in terms of the 30-minute version. But here's the short version. If you and your personal life are stable and you have a stable life and a stable outline of the world and you have a stable framework and you understand the things that are objectively true and the things that are not objectively true, and it all starts with us as individuals and you can never ask a sick person to try to help.

You can't ask a sick person to help a community, but it starts with us as individuals. And then you build that from that stability into a stable family and a husband and a wife that are locked together and who are individually stable and who have a marriage that's stable based upon something that lasts.

That's an impossible unit to separate. And as society disintegrates, whenever the family unit of a husband and wife gets split apart it leads to a slowly unfolding society that reflects onto children, that reflects onto the broader community. But it has nothing to do with going out and forcing anyone else to do what they can do.

You can't do it. You just see the reflection of that. You can only start with you as an individual. And I think this is where so many people get kind of the approach wrong is they just start with trying to say, "Well, how can I go and affect those 152 million people out there?" You can't do it.

There's no way to do it. The only way you can do it there is with the imposition of statist force and you come and you try to force people, but that either winds up in begrudging obeisance or revolution, at the worst case. So the things that we talk about every day have an impact on the culture.

And you and I, each of us, has a ripple effect on the people around us. So I don't know. It's too big of a question and there's so many unknowns. I don't feel confident publicly going farther than that. But I do know that as each of us individually engages in the proper stewardship of our own life, it has a ripple effect.

Thank you so much for listening to today's show. If you'd like to join in a future Q&A call, please become a patron of the show, radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron. Radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron. You get access to these Friday Q&A shows. In addition to that, remember today's advertiser, HelloFresh. Go to HelloFresh.com. Use the coupon code RPF30 to save 30 bucks off of your initial subscription.

HelloFresh.com, coupon code RPF30. I'll be back with you as soon as I can. I know the shows have been short, but I'm doing the best I can. So we'll just leave it at that today. Doing the best I can. I'll be back with you soon. Thanks for listening. This show is part of the Radical Life Media network of podcasts and resources.

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