Live from sunny South Florida, it's Q&A Friday. 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.

Today is Friday and to the best of my ability, we do Q&A shows on Friday. We've got a live phone conference, callers, listeners calling in with their questions and we'll go there in just a moment and see if we can provide some useful insight and wisdom. I enjoy doing these shows.

It's more like kind of a live call-in financial Q&A radio. I enjoy doing them and I know you as the audience enjoy them. It allows us to deal with some more practical topics than all the topics that I list every week. I need that. I need you guys to ask specific questions from me in order to cover these practical topics because often I spend so much time thinking about weird theoretical, ideological stuff, etc.

that I really need you guys' insight and questions. So today, it's going to be fun and we're going to get to some practical topics. Real quick, if you would like to join and have access to a call like this, come on by and sign up to become a patron of the show at RadicalPersonalFinance.com/patron.

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That doesn't cost you anything. Or join the Facebook group, the Radical Personal Finance Facebook group. I use both of those groups for notification sometimes. I have to do it at the moment. I'm choosing to limit the access to these calls just so I can do enough of them. I probably at this point could do a daily Q&A show and just open it up to the whole audience.

Who knows? Maybe I'll do that at some point. But right now that's not my plan. Go first to Mark in Washington State. Mark, welcome to Radical Personal Finance. Thanks, Joshua. Thanks for taking my call. Go ahead with your question, please. So my wife and I, a bit of background, we've been following the Dave Ramsey plan and we're unsure of what we need to be doing in our next step since we are looking to be moving internationally, moving back to my wife's country.

There's a lot I could say on this, but the basic point is we've concluded the political situation is such that we would not want to buy a home there. We could, as foreigners, be kicked out with 24-hours notice. And so we don't want to have any assets tied up in something like that.

And so we're trying to figure out what we should be doing in terms of housing given that. And so we've thought up of three kind of options and would love your thoughts as to what we should do. The first would be to buy a home in the U.S., find a good rental agency company that could overlook that and manage it for us, hopefully near families so they could occasionally go in, take a look, make sure it's okay.

The second would be to invest the equivalent of our down payment in maybe a no-load, low-turnover S&P 500 index fund so you can get the growth on that without paying constant taxes from the sales and turnover. The third option would be to just invest more in retirement savings since we are hoping to live overseas for life.

The risk of being kicked out is rather low, but it is still there. And so we're just trying to figure out what we should be doing to prepare to own a home, though we don't think we can own one in the country we'll be living in for the foreseeable future.

Well, I'm not Dave Ramsey, but since you mentioned his name, I'd be happy to be a co-laborer with him and coach you a la Dave Ramsey's plans. Which baby step are you in of Dave Ramsey's baby steps? We are in four, five, and six. We've been doing 15%. That's four.

We have roughly $500 a month extra on top of that. We have $4,200 in each of our two children's ESA health savings accounts. They are ages two and a half and one. And then we obviously don't have a six because that's paying off the house. And we skipped the, if you're familiar, we skipped the 3B because we thought we would not be able to buy the home living internationally.

And we've since taken a second step back and say, well, maybe we ought to be looking at buying a home domestically. And so for the last couple of months, we paused our retirement savings to just build up that fund a little bit more in case we did choose to buy a home.

But we can throw those back in obviously if we decide to not purchase a home. At this point, you and your wife are completely debt-free. How much money do you have all told, including retirement accounts just all across the board? How much money do you have? So everything, if I include our emergency fund savings and Roth, it is, let me do some quick math, sorry, about $52,000.

And when you are abroad, will you be earning a high income? We will be earning the equivalent of about $60,000 US. That goes a lot further in the country we're living in than it would be in the US. So we have some, I forget the word for that, but the cost of living will be lower.

Arbitrage, there we go. Thank you. Geographic arbitrage. How long do you expect to be abroad? We're thinking 25 to 30 years. So this is, you're planning to raise your children abroad, be established there, establish your careers abroad, and then possibly return to the United States during retirement year or something like that.

Correct. Correct. I think that the plan would be to retire here, most likely, with the caveat that there is the risk that we might need to leave given the political climate. But I think that risk is relatively low, but high enough I wouldn't want to have significant assets tied up that we couldn't be able to get out.

And will you maintain US citizenship and/or apply for dual citizenship in your country of residence? US citizenship will be maintained, and we are not able to do dual citizenship in that country. Interesting. Have you ever owned real estate either personally to live in and/or as a rental opportunity? No.

So let's start with that. I would not, if I woke up in your shoes, I would not pursue real estate. I don't see any reason to pursue real estate, at least not personal ownership. If you had some experience in it, that would be a reasonable thing. Or if you were going to be abroad for a short amount of time, that would be a reasonable thing.

But 25 to 30 years, I don't see any benefit for you in engaging in real estate. Here's why I say that. Real estate is an asset class. Just speaking broadly, real estate is an asset class I'm convinced will only ever increase as wages increase or decrease. Real estate is a commodity.

And so it has a specific connection to people's wages. So thus it'll basically in the aggregate only ever grow at the rate of inflation of wages. In time, real estate becomes worth less and less because the houseware is out. The land maintains some value, but the houseware is out.

And so when you have a long time perspective, 30 years, if you bought a brand new house today and you move forward 30 years, your house is not going to be as valuable on a dollar adjusted basis 30 years from now as it is today. It's a 30-year-old house.

Now the land may have changed and the underlying community may have changed, but on the whole, real estate is going to be a very steady asset class that will keep pace with wages. The ways in which real estate investors make their money are a fewfold. The most common ways is number one, to find an inefficient market, a mispriced house, something that is a deal because somebody's grandmother died and they got to dispose of the house and they want to sell quickly and they don't want to shine it up and fix it up and sell it there.

So that's one way. Another way is by finding a neighborhood or a particular market that's on a growth trajectory. This town is growing, the business climate is growing, et cetera. That's another way. Or what most real estate investors do is their basic benefit of real estate is they can borrow money for a house and have a tenant pay it off for them.

But it always involves some amount of work. When you start adding management costs in, it lowers your profit margin. If you're abroad, you're not going to be able to keep a good finger on the pulse of what's happening locally. When I start adding all those things together, given the fact that you have no history and no experience, I would not pursue real estate.

I don't see any benefit whatsoever in that direction. Now the question is, what do you do? Well, at first, I would do nothing except just get myself established in the new country. If you've got, just speaking broadly, 50 grand, 50 grand can be eaten up pretty quickly in all kinds of things.

Now we don't need to get into details of moving packages, who's moving you there, who's paying expenses, who's establishing you, et cetera. But if I woke up and had 50 grand and two young children and I was now we're moving abroad, I would just keep everything in cash until I made the transition, until I got settled.

You might find out a year or two years from now that what looks awesome is not. You might hate it, your wife might hate it, and you say, "That's it. We're going back to the United States." You might find out that you love it and that it's wonderful, and you might start seeing opportunities.

So I personally, if I were in your shoes, I would be very slow to do anything right now. Should you invest in stocks? Well, you already own some stocks. So certainly, you might just keep what you have. They're long-term investments, and so you might just keep what you have.

Would it work well for you to simply invest money into a broad-based index fund? Sure. That's an easy and efficient investment. It'll probably be great. You can buy good companies very inexpensively in the U.S. stock market by purchasing a broad-based, as you said, an index fund. You can have an investment manager who's managing the fund for you, doing so very inexpensively in today's investment world.

You can have great company managers, your boards of directors of all the many thousands of companies that you own and their executive teams, and they're constantly out searching the world for investments. So I would be entirely comfortable, if I woke up in your shoes, putting all of my investment dollars into a broad-based index fund.

You can do it with an S&P 500. You can just buy a total market U.S. index fund and move abroad. Chances are you come back in 30 years, you'll have tons of money in there, and there's nothing to worry about. I would be comfortable with that. I would be slow to make that my entire goal.

I would be open to opportunities I came across in the country of residence. Certainly if there is political instability, that is important. That is a concern. You always need to make sure you have a backup plan. Are you there in a governmental capacity where you have the support of the U.S.

government? No. Okay. So you need to just make sure if it's that unstable of a region, you need to make sure you have a plan to get out of the country. If that means you need to keep a Jeep near the border so you can get across the border, if that means you need to have plane tickets and whatnot, make sure that you have wealth that's not in the United States but that's in a neighboring country, something like that.

Just make sure you have backup plans. If you're in a region of the world that's that unstable, you need to think very carefully about your backup plans. I guess on the whole, I would move slowly, and I would wait to see until I got established in a local area what my opportunities were.

I don't see a compelling value proposition to trying to take all of the cash that I've saved and move it directly, immediately into the market at today's valuations. That's especially magnified because of the uncertainty of the coming days in your own schedule. So I would probably just leave everything in cash for the next couple of years, move abroad.

In the meantime, we may have a recession. There may be a dip in market prices. You can always buy in to another market fund. If you're investing in index funds, that means that you basically buy the premise that the market is pretty efficient. And so basically, you can buy in at any point in time.

And when you've got a 20- or 30-year time horizon, you're not going to miss out because you keep the money sitting in a bank account for a year or two until you get established abroad and then go ahead and buy in. That makes a lot of sense. Would you recommend to continue?

We've been doing the 15% into tax advantage Roth IRA accounts. Would you recommend to still do that 15% there? Or would you put pause on that as well until we know for sure we wouldn't be using that cash in a different capacity? Yeah, I wouldn't. And I would – I mean, personally, if I woke up in your shoes, I would not bother with any of the U.S.-based retirement accounts and things at this point in time.

And here's why. As someone who's living abroad, now you're going to keep your U.S. citizenship. And so the U.S. government will continue to believe that they're entitled to your income even though you will be living abroad and working abroad. The U.S. government out of all the governments in the world is the most tyrannical in the world when it comes to their claim on you.

And by the way, I would seriously investigate other options depending on the place that you're going. And that sounds like it would be in a politically unstable place. I want that blue passport. But if I were of the mental mind that I was happy to move abroad, I do think – you don't have enough money where this is going to matter at this point.

But I do think it's always important for people who are wealthier to consider renouncing U.S. citizenship and count the cost. There are some benefits but there are a lot of costs. And the big one is that the U.S. government thinks that they're entitled to all of your income that you earn in another country, that you spend in another country just because you have a blue passport.

That said, there is the earned income foreign exclusion. And as long as you're out of the country, I believe it's 330 days, something around that, somewhere between 300 and 330 days, then up to a certain amount which is in excess of six figures, the U.S. government will not tax you on that money as long as you're out of the country for the appropriate amount of time.

So you will be able to avoid the U.S. income tax. Well, if you're avoiding the U.S. income tax, then why should you worry about putting money into an account that's going to save you taxes on the income tax that you're not paying? Perhaps something – and I don't know the rules on this.

It's kind of specialized. I've always meant to think this through myself. But since I haven't decided to move abroad, I haven't detailed it. But you might – there might be benefit of putting money in a Roth IRA because you're not being taxed on the money anyway and maybe it would be sheltered.

The U.S. is certainly a very stable economy. But I don't get all that excited about keeping money in the U.S. system with the exception of the stability. And as an expatriate, I think there will be opportunities that will be available to you that aren't available to people who are full-time in the U.S.

Are you going to be in Asia or – in Asia, what region of the world are you going to be in? Aaron Ross Powell: We'll be in the Asian regions. Trevor Burrus: So if I were in the Asian region, I would establish some accounts in Singapore. If I were in Singapore or Hong Kong, I would establish some accounts there and I would participate in those markets as well and I would at least keep some of my assets in Hong Kong or Singapore as being outside of U.S.

jurisdiction but still in a very stable financial center. And there will be things that will open up to you as well. Don't be scared to invest where you know the opportunity. For example, I'm going to make up a country. Let's say that you're – you're living in a country that's very volatile but you're going to – nearby and you say, "All right here in Cambodia, I see some opportunities." There are often lots of opportunities at which you can apply capital and if you know the opportunity and if you can build the network and you understand the culture, there are huge business and investment opportunities for somebody like you in many of these regions of the world.

Where in the United States, having $30,000 doesn't do much for you, you can move in and you can invest in an apartment complex. You can purchase a couple of apartments. There are all kinds of things that open up to you as an investor with $30,000 of capital in some of the South Asian markets.

And many of these markets are very stable, very powerful and have a lot of opportunity in them. So I wouldn't jump on that today. It's going to take time to get your feet under you, get your family moved. But that's the point is look for opportunities that are there and especially if you're going to be in Asia, set up bank accounts in Hong Kong or Singapore, set up some assets there and use that as your banking center.

Investigate the five flags theories from the world of offshoring. Investigate some of the opportunities. There are a bunch of big brands that do good business and maybe subscribe to a couple of the newsletters that'll point you in the direction of some of that if you haven't researched that. That's helpful.

That's helpful. Thank you. Great. I wish you guys all the best. You'll have an adventure no matter what and recognize, just give yourself an option. A lot of times people find out that what they thought was going to be awesome isn't quite so awesome as they wanted. So don't paint yourself into a corner.

Give it some time to make sure it works out. John in Pennsylvania, welcome to the show, sir. Hi, thanks, Joshua. How can I serve you today? I have a question. I think it's a pretty simple math question just to do an Excel spreadsheet, but I guess there's some other surrounding questions about it that I had.

It's about a pension from an old company that I used to work for. They're offering a payout for a one or two month period window. It was a pension. It's a big global company. You may or may not be around when I'm 65. I'm 38 now. It is money that I kind of knew was there in pension form, but I wasn't really deeply highly counting on.

They're offering a lump sum payout versus a monthly payout that I can take now until I die. It seems to be that the lump sum payment is about 21 years worth of the monthly payment if I take it now. So if I live more than 21 years, I would, I guess, dollar-wise get more money, but of course that doesn't factor in inflation and all that stuff.

I guess that's kind of what I'm trying to figure out. I can do the Excel spreadsheet to tell me when these two payouts equal each other, but I'm not really sure how to account for inflation just eating up the value of those dollars. My tendency is just to say I should probably take the lump sum or wait until traditional retirement and take the normal payout at that time.

Are either of the amounts, the lump sum payout or the monthly income, are either of them substantial in your current financial picture? Not at all. I mean, nothing to say that it'd be a nice chunk to have, but I'm also not sure the tax implications of taking the lump sum.

It's about $23,500 for the lump sum and the monthly payout would be $91. And then there's like a 50% joint annuity survivor benefit. So it goes down if I die from my survivor. It's like $88 and $87 after that. Are you required to make a decision? They're either going to send you a lump sum or they're going to start paying or can you defer the decision?

Yeah, the third decision is do nothing. They may or may not offer this again in the future. That's one thing that this opportunity could come up next year or 10 years from now or whatever. Or if I do nothing, it's just I get the normal pension payout if the pension fund is still existing when I'm 65.

Why do you think they're making this offer? Why do you think they're trying to buy you out? The company, a lot of my friends still work there. It's a big global company, but certain divisions are not doing excellent right now. I imagine it's probably a little bit of bookkeeping or trying to save costs on administrative costs of how many people they have in the pension is my guess.

I don't think the huge company would completely go away. It's been doing poor for about two or three years, but I don't think it'll necessarily go under or anything like that. But the pension fund may be mismanaged or something like that. But I think it's just cost savings for how many people they have in the fund itself maybe.

Well, there's always a risk. Don't worry. I mean, unless you're aware of something specific or unless you're aware that this particular pension fund is significantly underfunded, there are always risks. There are always risks in investing. Anybody can bail and they can stop paying you any time on anything. So you've got to be aware of the fact that those risks always exist.

Your question is basically a mathematical one. And so what I would do is I would go back and say, what's the alternative use of the dollar? If I, for example, if you are just going to say, I'm going to put the money into stocks. Well, if you have a lot of stocks already, then maybe this doesn't help you that much.

Maybe it's not that much of a deal. If the pension is you think it's poorly invested and it's underperforming, then maybe making that move would be useful, putting it into stocks. But if it's not going to make a big difference, then you might just consider it as a useful asset and wait until you have a better opportunity.

A lot of times a pension is, especially if they're trying to buy you out, you need to investigate it carefully, mathematically and see, did they put themselves on the hook for too much of an obligation? Often a pension, they're wanting to get rid of it because it's too expensive.

I mean, the major trend for companies has been to eliminate guaranteed defined benefit pensions in favor of defined contribution plans, such as 401k plans, because they're less risk for the company. So you want to look. Sometimes you got a sweetheart deal. There are oftentimes where there are things that are mispriced.

Sometimes annuity contracts are mispriced from insurance companies and they offer people buyouts. So I'm always very suspicious when I start getting letters from somebody saying, "Hey, would you want this lump sum of money?" Because they might be doing that because they mispriced something and they actually have made a guarantee that's much more valuable than they would otherwise be.

The way that you do need to do the spreadsheet, sit down, and it's not just the break even. That's not the... The break even analysis doesn't tell you anything. It doesn't help you to say, "Well, 21 years, I'll get all the rest of this payout." That doesn't tell you anything unless you've got some usefulness for it.

What you need to do is you need to do a present value calculation. And because this is a lifetime payment, the simplest way for you to do this is to call an insurance agent and ask them, "How much... If I wanted to buy an annuity payout today from a commercial, a highly rated, A-rated commercial insurance company, if I wanted to buy a straight lifetime annuity," line up the numbers with what they're offering.

If they're offering you a 50% joint and survivor, then said, "I'd like you to calculate for me a 50% joint and survivor annuity payout. How much would I need to give you in order to buy a $91 monthly income?" Is $91 flat or is there an inflation adjustment on the amount?

Michael O'Hara I think it's flat, but I'd have to read the fine print here. I think it's flat. Tedd Johnson Okay. So you just ask them, "How much money would I need to give to you to buy a $91 a month flat payout for the rest of my life with a 50% survivor benefit?" And they'll give you a number.

Now if that number is higher or lower, then you can start to understand the relative benefits of it. I wouldn't jump to start incurring income from them unless you had some use for it. An extra $91 a month is probably not that big a deal. I would probably either leave it or take the lump sum and do something else.

But that's the simplest way for you to do. Call an insurance agent, get a quote on a commercial annuity, and compare it that way to try to find out what the present value is. And then just read the paperwork carefully. Is it inflation-adjusted? If so, maybe that's very valuable to you.

And how do the themes work? That's the extent that I would be able to answer it without reading all the paperwork. But I think if you do that, if you call an insurance agent, get a quote on a commercial annuity and read the paperwork, you'll have a little more information to make a better decision.

Fair enough? Michael O'Hara Thank you. I appreciate that. That's very helpful. I think my instinct was always to not take deals when they're offered like this because of exactly what you said. But my instinct is also the easy way, and I don't have to do any work to do that.

So I wanted to make sure I wasn't just jumping to the easy path. But I will call the insurance agent since I have insurance with a guy, and he can probably run those numbers for me. So thank you very much. Preston Pysh (00:36:40): Yeah. Any insurance agent that works in the areas of life insurance, anybody that does that, it's just simple.

They're just going to pull up the software on their computer. They can run that. It's about a 10-minute job. And that'll be the simplest way to get some starting assessment. All right. Bruce in Massachusetts, welcome to Radical Personal Finance. How can I serve you today? Bruce D. Lawrence (00:37:10): Hi, Joshua.

Thank you so much for taking my call today. Really enjoy your show. Love the advice you always give. It's always kind of practical and well thought out. I was calling because I read all the different financial bloggers and things like that, and I definitely have a plan that I'd like to be financially independent in 10 years.

But in addition to that, I certainly want to make sure the more important goal is I take care of my family. And I recently just got married, sold my house, and just trying to figure out kind of what the next steps are. I've never rented before, but that's our plan for the next year, kind of assess where we want to go from there.

I live in the Boston area. The cost of housing here is quite expensive. So I'd love to hear your thoughts on just kind of the pros and cons of having a family and renting versus owning. I think financially it makes more sense to rent, but I feel like I might be missing out on other things.

So I know you always have good questions and thoughts for your guests to keep in mind when they're making decisions like that. Congratulations on your nuptials. How recently were you married? A couple months ago. My wife is from India. She's amazing, and it's really exciting to be entering this phase in our lives.

And we certainly plan on looking into having kids, blessed and fortunate enough to do that. So kind of just big picture advice, then let's talk some specifics. And to clarify, you sold your house. So at the moment you are renting and neither you nor your wife own any real estate at the moment?

I have property in another state with my father. We built a house from – we just bought land and built a house from the ground up. So that's like an additional property. It's owned free and clear, so I just have to pay a little bit of maintenance and taxes.

My dad helps me with all that stuff. Great. So to begin with, I think it's always important to start with the human factor and not the financial factor. We don't want to serve the idol of finances or we don't want to be slaves to money. The money is our slave.

And so everything we do with money needs to fit us, not the other way around. So it's never a good idea to do something just because it's a wise financial thing. We always want to start with what's right for us and then figure out the wisest way to handle the money given the constraints.

If I were newly married, I don't look around and say, "What's the cheapest place that I can find?" and then move into it. I start with saying, "What's an appropriate thing for us to do, an appropriate way for us to live?" I think at the beginning of a marriage, for many people, I would recommend what you've done to start off with renting together and eliminate the hassle of home ownership and enjoy the phase of newlyweds.

There is just a simple proverb or an aphorism that I love, which is during the initial stage of marriage, just simply focus on learning your wife or if a woman is listening, learning your husband. Focus on learning your spouse and focus on enjoying that time together. In the Mosaic Law in the Old Testament and the Christian Bible, there was a law that says when a man is newly married, he is not permitted to be sent off to war.

He must be given a year to stay at home and learn how to please his wife. So conceptually, I like that as a basic fundamental principle. When I was married, I sought to withdraw from every community organization I had previously been involved in. I sought to withdraw from every entangling connection or commitment that I could disentangle myself from.

Part of that includes real estate. I don't think you should immediately, after being very recently married, say, "Let's run out and start house hunting." Because when you're newly married, you hardly know each other's language. You hardly know each other's goals. You hardly know each other's dreams. You hardly know what you want or what you need.

Time has a tremendous benefit of helping those things be established to help to understand what your wife's preferences are, what her style is, what are the things that are important to her, for you to talk all those things through. And there is no substitute for time. So on the basis of that principle, I would encourage you to move very slowly and to focus on rent, just rent.

I don't even mind paying more. I'm not worried about making finances number one. My wife is more important than my money. And so we focus on my wife first. We focus on building a solid, establishing our marriage first together before we worry about money. There's no reason to be wasteful.

So I'm not saying that in order to establish a marriage, you've got to go and spend massive amounts of money that you don't have. That's not the principle. The principle is just focus on the relationship. The phase of life of being newlyweds is a unique phase. It is a blessing to be together, to be able to enjoy that relationship.

And it's a really fun phase, especially even before children arrive. There's a phase at which when you can enjoy being husband and wife, when you can enjoy the freedom, the companionship, all of the blessings that come with being able to be together, to live together, to travel together, all of those things that you couldn't do before you were married, you now have that opportunity and you have the freedom and flexibility of not yet caring for children.

And so I would focus on renting and enjoying the time. This is when my wife and I, we tried to do a bunch of traveling, went on ski vacations, and we did things that would be more expensive when you're buying right now, if you go out to dinner and you're buying four or five meals versus two.

So we focused on doing some of those things that are really fun to do with two people that are much more challenging to do later when you have more mouths to feed, more Lyft tickets to buy, more ski rentals to do, all of that kind of thing. So that's the principle.

Now let's talk practical. Do you, are you and she settled that where you are is where you think you'll be for coming years or decades, or is there any question about that? No, I think we'd stay in this area. My family's in this area and the job opportunities for both of us are really good.

I'm in a settled career, I'm working for local government and she's got a lot of job opportunities in her field in the Boston area. Okay. And do you have money saved where you can afford to buy a house? So I certainly could afford to buy a house right now if we so made that decision, but it would be a big mortgage, which I want to avoid.

So I probably have about maybe 200 that I could put down towards the house right now. But I mean, in the Boston area, you're looking at maybe six, 700, the cost of houses for just something, you know, halfway decent. So I'd want to say about more if we did make that choice in the future.

Is your wife a semi-recent Indian immigrant or was she born and raised here in the United States? She came over here for school for a PhD. Is she, does she retain some of that flexible immigrant mentality where she's willing to live differently than many U.S. Americans live or is she fully acculturated?

She says, this is what I'm going to live and this is how I'm going to live and I'm not taking anything less. No, she's amazing. She's got all the wonderful benefits that they always talk about that immigrant mentality. Good. So that's a blessing. Definitely. I'm very, very, very blessed, very fortunate to have her.

Good. Yeah. It's, that's a real blessing. Cross-cultural relationships and things like that bring, can bring a unique set of challenges, but they can also bring a unique set of blessings just given the varying background and if you fit well with the Indian culture and if she retains some of the wonderful things about that culture, that's a real blessing.

So I would explore options and here would be a couple of things. Number one, the most important thing is to get clarity on what your plan is and her plan is together. How much, you know, you mentioned I want to build a plan for financial independence in 10 years.

What does that mean? Does that mean you want to quit your job in 10 years? Does that mean you want to be able to quit your job in 10 years? Does that mean you want to build a business? You know, she has a PhD. Is that for, does she have some area of research she wants to pursue?

Is what is the, what are the family goals? And I would just spend a lot of time writing down those dreams, those goals, and working on those things together to see what your long-term plan is. And just spend a lot of time in communication, spend a lot of time dreaming, spend a lot of time writing those things down.

I would spend a lot of time- Yeah, that's exactly what we do. Yeah, every month we go over our budget and talk about our values and goals and how we're accomplishing it. So yeah. Good, good. Then the next thing is spend a lot of time trying to figure out, the best that you can determine, what do you think that you and she would like to have?

What do you think that you would need? What kind of place would you like to live in? There are benefits if you buy, let's say you buy a duplex or a triplex or a quadplex, something like that. You may have the money where you could be able to buy something like that, and that can be a really valuable way for you can get some tenants, which will pay you rental income, and yet you can have your own space.

So you have the benefits of having additional rental property that helps to build your net worth, but it also gives you a place to live. If you can do that, it's not quite as nice of a luxury lifestyle as it is to have all four walls be your own, to have a big old yard all around you and a beautiful oak tree that's yours alone, but for a young married couple or for a couple with young children, that can be really, really, really, really valuable.

And if you and she are willing to take those lifestyle challenges, we'll say, where it's not quite the easiest, most fancy life, that can make a huge difference in your financial situation. So you talk about that. Is that a sacrifice that you're willing to make? In general, from my experience, I would say this.

From the time of newlyweds up through the time your children start to reach, say, the ages of four, somewhere in that range, three, four, five-ish, no hard and fast rule, you can pretty much live anywhere, do anything, and it really doesn't much matter if you live in an apartment or if you live in a house in the suburbs type of things.

Once your children start to reach three, four, five-ish, or once you start to have a houseful more than two children, you start to appreciate something as simple as a backyard. There's a reason why demographically today, young single people and young married couples often like to live in a city, and then as they have children, they often like to move to the suburbs.

That has not changed. Demographic shifts are happening, but that has not changed. And the reason is as simple as wanting to open the door, toss the kids in the backyard and say, "Please, I need some quiet in the house." So that's really, really valuable, but you don't necessarily need that now.

So given that you're working towards financial independence, I would personally look around. I would start in just the apartment that you are. If she's willing to do some kind of house hacking, like I described, big house, have tenants, et cetera, that can be a major boon to your wealth.

I would try to buy something like a duplex as my first property. If you can buy a duplex or a triplex, you live in it yourself, rent out the other units. Oftentimes you may be able to make the mortgage work where it'll cover most of your mortgage payment. And then when you move out to the next place, if you can continue on selling when your kids start to reach a certain age, then you can move into that larger single family house that fits your lifestyle more.

Final comment, you've got to shop the market and you've got to be patient. Real estate, the timing of the buy matters. It matters hugely. So that's where you need to put on your prognostication glasses. Look at the Boston economy, look at the local market, study it, study the historical trends and ask yourself, is now the time for me to be buying real estate in the Boston area?

Especially if you're looking into rental property, I would spend some time talking with investors and try to figure out what's the ratio, what's the price to rents ratio, are there deals right now? Is this a good time to buy or is this a good time to sit tight? And this stuff matters.

If you can time it well enough, it'll make a big difference to you, especially being in a big economy. But all of those things are local considerations. Is that helpful? Yeah, definitely. It's all the stuff that I've been thinking of. I just, like I said, I really value the advice you give your guests and wanted to make sure I wasn't missing some subject or some area that I should be thinking about.

I did look into the idea of duplexes a while back, but I don't think it suits my specific needs. I don't know, just my goals or the quality of those houses always seem to be because of zoning board and regulations and things like that, really, really old homes. And even if they had been redone, there's still a lot of just maintenance upkeep issues that I didn't want to get into along with tenant stuff.

So I did explore that option a while back and kind of determined that wasn't a path that I wanted to go down. I'd rather be more efficient with budgets and stuff like that, as opposed to getting into that area. But I appreciate the advice. That's definitely a path to look into, at least for people.

All those things are localized scenarios that you need to understand on a local basis. Here would be my final encouragement to you, something that I learned. Housing is not particularly important to me as an individual. When I talk about crazy stuff, living in a car, living in an RV, living on a boat, living in a tent on the beach, my personality and my goals, I would be perfectly happy to live in those contexts.

And I'm a pretty extreme – I'm a pretty radical guy. So when it comes to financial independence, things like that, I would. I would not in South Florida. I like air conditioning too much. But if I lived in a place that was a little cooler, I'd set up a canvas wall tent and a wood stove and live in that.

I would. I'd be that guy in the gold rush who was going out and living like a hobo out on the land to do a gold rush. So what happened, what I learned is I brought a lot of that to my marriage. And my wife is wonderful. She is not high maintenance.

She is just a wonderful woman. But I was so intense that in the early part of our marriage, I didn't spend all that much time listening to her. And I was starting with always the number one thing being the money, the money, the money. How do we do this efficiently?

After all, we got to have the most efficient plan to financial independence. This is the most important, financial independence, financial independence. And I forget the exact circumstances. But one day, I just woke up and the Lord really convicted me and I just realized that I was not listening and honoring what was important to her because – and I realized that I was diminishing by my constant commentary on housing, by my constant thing about, "Look at all these wasteful people and living in these giant mansions when they could live in a shack by the river and be just as happy because they had all kinds of free time." I wasn't listening to what was important to her.

I wasn't paying attention to it. By always focusing on the money, I was diminishing that. And I realized that our house is very, very important to my wife. Most of her work comes out of and relates to our home. And so it's important to her in a way that's different than it's important to me.

And I really realized that I had not honored her. I had not loved her. I had not understood what was important to her. And I resolved to change and I resolved to change. And so I started to focus and make a bigger focus of making sure that home projects were done.

I sought to make sure that she had plenty of money available for any kind of home changes that she wanted to make, any kind of decorating things, anything that was important to her that I made sure to do that. And I stopped talking about stupid things and started honoring the value of living in a beautiful, comfortable home.

And she really appreciated that and has appreciated that. Now you don't have to be stupid with it. We still live in kind of a lower class neighborhood at the moment. We live very modestly, but there are certain things about our house that aren't great and we'll change that in days to come.

But I think that attitude made a big difference. So as one encouragement from one who's a few years down the road to you as another newly married man, I would encourage you, make sure that you're honoring the things that are important to her and recognizing the fact that she looks at the world differently than you do.

And if you honor her and make sure that everything that she needs is your priority first, there's a real truth to the aphorism, "Happy wife, happy life." I always come at it, I do all marriage counseling from a biblical perspective. The scripture says, "A man should love his wife as he loves himself." And so that means that as I love my wife, that's an extension of it, that I always look and try to understand and look through her eyes and see what's important.

And that means that finances and getting the cheapest place to live is not always the best plan. So good luck. Congratulations on your marriage. Give yourself to it and you will find the rewards are tremendous. I think that's something that needs to be applied in frankly, just about every area of life.

I think it's related to housing. Remember, money is not the God. Money makes a terrible master. And those who put money as their number one priority of how can I get the most money, I mean, there's a reason why we don't think highly of the word miser. You always picture some guy out in the back of his, some lonely old bearded hairy smelly man out in the back of his shack with a rusty mason jar filled with coins, counting his stacks of money.

And he's lonely and he's miserable, but the money is his master. It's like Gollum in Lord of the Rings. My precious. Money is a terrible master. Money is a slave. It's a servant and it should be used to meet the needs of humans. The resources are here to meet your needs.

And so that means that they'll change over time. If you spend all the time meeting all of your wants as fast as possible, you never have any money and then down the road, the needs are never met. But if you do it right and are careful, but always prioritize humans and always prioritize life, then you can really get the best of both worlds.

You can enjoy the abundance and the freedom that plenty of money brings and you can enjoy the peak life experiences that make the difference of having a life worth living. Life worth living is not measured by arriving in the cemetery as the richest dead guy among the many. Life worth living goes much deeper.

Money is a servant. It's a slave. It's something that should be used to build a big life. All right, that's it for today's show. Thank you all so much for listening. I'm your host, Adam McLean. I'll see you next time. Bye. Thank you all so much for listening. Happy Friday, happy weekend, happy Labor Day weekend to you.

If you celebrate holidays such as that, I hope that you enjoy the time away. Remember, as with many things with Friday, make this weekend a special weekend. Plan something special. My family and I, we're leaving town. We're going to go and visit some friends. Really looking forward to that.

Make the day special and plan for it and make a peak experience. A little bit of thought in advance can take many experiences from ordinary to extraordinary. Hope you've enjoyed the show. Hope it's served you. Hope it's given you something thought-provoking. I'll be back with you next week. This is the Radical Life Media Network.