Today on Radical Personal Finance, let's celebrate a little bit. I'm going to celebrate episode 500 of the show and I'm going to celebrate with you your personal financial accomplishments. 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 we will focus on the encouragement part of that little slogan that I lead off every show with by hearing your stories and your voices and what Radical Personal Finance has meant for you. Today is going to be a special show, episode 500.

If I do the math on that, I would guess probably if we average them all out, some of my three hour marathon shows and some of my little five and 10 and 15 minute little shows, I would bet that the average length of Radical Personal Finance would come out, who knows, an hour, 45 minutes, something like that.

So if we were to say that there are 500 hours of Radical Personal Finance, that means that – see, if you listen 24 hours a day at 500 hours total, it would take you 20 full days to get through the archives of Radical Personal Finance. That's a lot of talking.

I'm tired. I know that many of you have been with me since the very beginning. I've received a number of emails from people who said, "Joshua, I was there when you first published the inaugural 10 episodes of the show and then went, disappeared for a year." Many of you said that you've listened to every episode and I want to thank you for that.

It's an honor that you would spend time with me and it's a great honor and I want to treat that appropriately and always do my best to serve you effectively with every minute of your precious time that you give to me. I feel a greater burden to be respectful of your time than even to be respectful of your money.

In a sense, money is an inexhaustible resource. You can always make more money but time is not. Time is a finite resource. There was a beginning of time and there will be an end of time in a cosmic sense and then your life has a beginning and it will have an end and no matter how long and well-lived your life is, in the context of cosmic eternity, that time is very, very small.

It's such a responsibility that I feel and I just want to thank you for sharing that time with me. It's really been a journey for me over these last 500 episodes by many metrics. Personal finance has been a huge success and I want to thank you for that. It's due to your support, your listening, and your patronage.

Many of you have sent me money, supported me on Patreon. Many of you have supported the advertisers on the show. I want to thank you for all of that action. I could not have continued doing this show the way that I have without your support and so I'm deeply honored by that support.

And it's easy for words like that to sound trite but I assure you they are not trite. As I have changed many aspects of my life and my family's life over the past years, it's been quite the adventure and it would not be possible without you. So in many ways, Radical Personal Finance has been a huge success.

500 episodes is far beyond the average duration of an average podcast. Radical Personal Finance, as I record this in November of 2017, is just under 8.5 million total lifetime downloads. That's in the world of podcasting extremely strong and that's just – it's all thanks to you. So in many ways, the show has been a huge success.

In many ways, the show I consider to be kind of a total failure. There are a lot of things that I've tried to do and wanted to do that I haven't been able to figure out the way to do and I'm going to fix those things and I still am fixing those things.

In today's show, I'm going to be very careful to not let my mouth overstep my ability to produce. It's a very challenging habit of mine that my brain is filled with big ideas and my mouth commits to those and then my infrastructure falls apart in my ability to actually accomplish things.

I'm not going to share with you everything today that I have planned for the future. Just know this, I'm getting better and I'm not stopping and I'm not resting on my laurels. My job is to serve you and I have ideas and clear ideas on how to do that more effectively and my entire focus is to serve you effectively.

So I'm dedicated to that craft and I have no intention of changing. I have no intention of going anywhere. So I just want to lead off with that message, just resounding clarity. I'm very proud of what we've accomplished over the last 500 episodes but frankly, this is season one.

Season two is coming up soon. If you thought season one was good, then just wait for season two because it's going to get even better. In a way, I feel like I've hit my stride. I feel like I've dealt with over the last – let's see, it's been almost three and a half years, over the last three and a half years of broadcasting, I feel like I've dealt with a lot of the learning curve of learning to be a podcaster.

My intention is that the episode after this is a long list of lessons that I have learned as a podcaster to help many of you who are building podcasts, building blogs, sharing your ideas in the public space. I feel like this has been kind of a college course. Started with an internship and then went into school.

So over the last few years, I feel like I've been in school and in many ways, I'm more confident than I've ever been. I feel matured as a broadcaster. My skin has thickened which is very helpful in the world of public ideas. I've become clear on what my message is, what my skill is.

I've become clear on the tone of radical personal finance, the type of subjects and topics that I intend to tackle and the types of subjects that I don't. I've become clearer on who I want to talk to. I've learned from mistakes along the way. So I'm sure I'll continue to make mistakes but I feel much more confident than I ever have in the history of this show and I'm excited about the forthcoming season two of radical personal finance.

Today, however, I want to feature some of your stories. Many of you, beginning way back in March, when I put out a call for you to share what the show has meant to you, how it's been helpful, the progress that you have made in your life and your finances over the past months and years because of the show, many of you responded and sent in your voicemails beginning all the way back in March.

At the same time that I put out a call for voicemails, I put out a call for photos. I want to thank you to all of you who have sent me those photos, all of you who have sent me just family photos and pictures of you. It has been awesome.

The reason I did that – by the way, I've got four times as many photos as I do voicemails. Also a couple of dozen emails saying, "Well, I wanted to create a voicemail and I tried but I couldn't actually get it done." The number of voicemails was the smallest and here I am building a show off of your voicemails.

But the family photos have been so helpful for me. One of the real rules of broadcasting or the rules of writing, effective writing, effective broadcasting is to speak to your ideal listener. The way that you speak will have an effect that will draw the ideal person and will repel the type of person that you're not trying to speak to.

And so if you are writing a letter or writing publicly, it's important to identify who you're trying to speak to. I learned this a decade plus ago when I was studying how to write good sales copy and effective copywriting for selling stuff and you always start with your ideal customer.

The ideal customer for a Harley-Davidson motorcycle is different and looks different than the ideal customer for Jimmy Choo high heel shoes. These are different people. And so if you're going to write effective copy for Harley-Davidson, you need to think about who's likely to buy the Harley-Davidson motorcycle. Now although I would have given you that advice, I didn't take that advice when I started Radical Personal Finance because I had no idea.

I didn't know who I was trying to speak to because I just was trying to talk about some stuff that I thought was important that I saw was underrepresented. I had a bit of a plan but not much and so I just sat down and said, "I'm going to speak." And so it's been so neat to get your many pictures from you.

They're not going anywhere. I just have them all set aside in a separate folder on my computer. They're labeled with your first name and all the other metadata is stripped off of them so you're clean. I'm not doing anything with them but I have a slideshow set up and I run that slideshow so that I can look at all the pictures.

And it helps me to think about who I'm speaking to and it's been so encouraging to me to have those pictures. So thank you to those of you who have sent me a family photo. If you have not sent me a family photo, I would love to have one.

Feel free to send me an email, joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com and attach a family photo. If you'd like to be in my screensaver, just for me, not for anything else but it helps me to look at you and when I'm speaking, it allows me to connect with you and that's been awesome.

In many ways, and this is not a complaint, just an observation, in many ways, podcasting is a very lonely endeavor. I sit here in front of a computer screen with a microphone and speak and I know that I'm in your car with you. I know that I'm in your earbuds as you're running through the park.

I know that I'm with you as you travel across the country on an airplane. But because of the challenge of synchronous communication, because when you're listening to me, you're not sitting in front of a computer keyboard where you can just type a comment or write me a note, then it's often challenging to measure the effectiveness.

And so I just want to say thank you to those of you who take the time to write to me and to put these photos down and to listen. Don't ever feel bad about not listening to everything. Don't ever feel bad about not writing to me. Don't ever feel bad, please, about not supporting the show on Patreon.

I want to serve you effectively. And I know that if I can serve you effectively, then everything else will work. So please don't feel the need to do any of that stuff necessarily, unless you want to. I'm not complaining here. Just trying to share with you and express my heart of gratitude.

So looking at your pictures as I record has just been really neat and been very encouraging to me to see who's listening. It's awesome. I also received a bunch of voicemails. These voicemails go all the way back to March of 2017 when I first started to receive them. I received, as I said, probably 25% of the number of voicemails as photos.

And I also received many just private notes of thanks, written emails that have been very helpful and very encouraging. Thank you to all of you who've sent them to me. In a moment, I'm going to start playing the voicemails just to share so we can share this together. I think it's really neat for you to be able to hear from some of your fellow listeners.

It's a little hard for me because it feels so self-congratulatory when all of you say, "Thank you, Joshua." So I often—it's hard for me to just to kind of constantly hear praise and play all that praise publicly. But I know that it's encouraging because I've gotten some of you to share your stories.

And that's often the goal is to hear you share your stories. I know that many of you in hearing this would say, "Well, I would have sent it in a note." And I want to encourage you with two things. One, at the time when those notes were coming in, the vast majority of you wrote to me in March and in April.

And I was heavily publishing and pushing and saying, "Hey, come on. Get those voicemails in." I thought that I was going to publish Episode 500 on July 1 of this year, July 1 of 2017. That was my goal. I had an episode list and I had it all planned out to publish on July 1.

Well, it's November. The show will go out on November 3, Friday. And that was just because the last six months were pretty brutal for me. And so that's why I didn't push it more. So if you'd like to share more voicemails in the future—I'm going to quit talking and get right to it.

If you'd like to share more voicemails in the future, then please go ahead and do that. And I may play them at some point in the future here and there on a show. Just neat to hear. And thank you so much. So thank you all for celebrating this milestone with me.

Without more talking, let's get right to it. Dustin: Joshua and fellow radicals, my name is Dustin. I'm a longtime listener and patron of the show. And Joshua Sheets and Radical Personal Finance has had an absolute massive impact on my life. And I'll just tell one story to kind of demonstrate that.

I found Joshua and his podcast roughly around the time of a quarter-life crisis, if you will. I was newly married. My wife just started her emergency medicine residency. We were three months in, and I'm working as a physical therapist. She comes home absolutely miserable and says, "I want to quit." Like many of you, probably the first thing that may have gone to your mind says, "Oh my gosh, all those student loans." And that's what I thought of as well.

We had about $130,000, which is not a lot for a physician typically, but the weight of that was real. I really felt that. But my wife was not happy. She was going day in and day out into this hospital, not knowing why she was doing what she was doing, but she was absolutely miserable.

And she would say that herself. And I had a really tough time. What do I do in this position? And so I started to learn more about finance and how we could tackle this debt. And I found Radical Personal Finance. The thing that Joshua Sheets has done, an absolute beautiful job of doing for me, has been to apply financial principles to our unique situation.

There's a lot of financial principles that are portrayed as almost universal truths, as everyone should act on them, especially if you read financial blogs and listen to podcasts and whatnot. But Joshua helped me think through our situation and realize that it's okay if we put a lot of our income towards this debt.

Most advice that we got from friends and family was, "No, you want to pay off the student loans as slowly as possible. You can put your money in other places and get more interest." Now in terms of making money, that probably does make sense. But in terms of quality of life, it did not at the time.

And I'm so thankful that we decided to put 60 to sometimes 70% of our income towards paying off our student loans. Granted, we already had our emergency fund and we were prepared for the worst to happen. But we threw so much of our income towards that student debt that right after my wife finished her residency and started working as an emergency physician, she's debt-free.

She can quit any day she wants and we've made decisions so that she can quit if this field in medicine is not as fulfilling as what she thought it would be going into it. And I can honestly say if it was not for radical personal finance, we would probably still be paying the minimum amount.

My wife would be miserable and I probably would be too. So Joshua, thank you, sir. You've done a tremendous amount of work in our lives. I love that story. If there would be one thing that I would love to see, just more and more people crush its debt. I've shared publicly my conflict.

I acknowledge that debt can be a useful tool. But man, from a lifestyle perspective, being free of debt, if I could help more people, especially more young couples be free of debt and labor at that one job for the next decade, I would feel really, really good about my work.

Hi Josh, this is Ellie. When you asked for testimonials, I knew that I had to call in and say thank you. My husband and I are in our late 20s. We're low on the income scale because we work in ministry where the wages are set and there's not particularly any room for salary growth.

But we love it and we feel that this is the life that God has called us to. Thanks to radical personal finance, my husband and I have begun our journey to get out of debt. We owe 40 grand. This is month number one and we were able to put $1,000 extra on our loans.

I can't believe it. It feels great. I was also helped after listening to a recent podcast where you answered a listener question about going back to college. I realize that personally I've been trying to fit a square peg in a round hole regarding the 10 grand I've already invested in school.

But I'm now free of world pressure saying that I have to go to college and get a college career to be able to say that I've made something of myself. I'm able to let go of pressure that I've put on myself to make something out of the investment that I made.

So thank you. It's interesting. One of the biggest things that I observe and that I would love to continue to battle against is this horrific thing that we do, especially in the United States of America, where the one and only metric of worth is your career. This is stupid and yet it's pervasive.

We've sold a bill of goods to my entire generation that says the only way that you should measure yourself is how effective you are at your career, how powerful are you, and how much money do you make. I love to bust that. I'm just getting started on that. FYI, if you're interested in my organization here, I don't have these themed in any way with one or two minor exceptions, which I've adjusted due to length considerations.

I'm playing these in the order they came in. So that's what's going on. Hi, Joshua. I found your show about six or seven months ago. My husband and I had realized that we were basically hitting a wall. It occurred to us that for the past, I guess, nine months, maybe a year, we had basically been spending all of our income.

We weren't really saving anything. In fact, many months we were moving over a little bit of money from our savings to cover our costs. Thankfully, we weren't running a credit card balance or anything like that. But still, it was pretty disconcerting to realize that that had been going on for so long.

I think we thought every month, "Oh, it's just an off month. It'll be fine the next month." But it never was. So I'll add to that that unfortunately, I have a master's degree. My husband does too. We're fairly well-educated adults, but finance and money were not areas of expertise for us or really interest.

But I decided that I had to get to the bottom of this and figure it out. What were we doing and what could we do better? Because we make plenty of money. There's no reason we should have felt so strapped. I looked around online and I found all kinds of different shows like Dave Ramsey and whatnot.

But everything seemed too simplistic. I really wanted to know the why and the how of things. And thankfully, so thankfully, I found your show, Radical Personal Finance. And it was so eye-opening and enlightening and inspiring, to tell you the truth. I've devoured most of your archive. I listened to all your new shows.

It has really inspired a curiosity in me that I'd never had about financial topics and investing. I've had that about many other things, but finance and investing had just never been one of those subjects for me. So what have we changed? We're going through, we're taking this year, 2017, and we're reevaluating everything in our budget and our lifestyle.

It's probably going to take about a year just because we're going through every single thing from our grocery budget to housing costs to insurance to investments and savings, everything. And looking at it with a critical eye that we've never looked at before. So we have shifted from basically saving very little or nothing in the previous year.

We had in time in years prior, but not immediately before I started listening to your show, of saving very little to I think the last few months we've been saving about 30% of our income, which has felt amazing. We're kind of reevaluating how we want to save that and invest it and use it.

We reevaluated our housing because we thought of moving, but then we settled on we really wanted to stay in our house. We love our neighborhood. But what were the other aspects of our budget that seemed wasteful? And obviously we found money because we're now saving 30%. Let's see. What else have we changed?

Just our entire outlook and interest in all things financial has been just fascinating. The turnaround and eye opening. I don't think you think of your show as being inspiring, but I have found it inspiring. So I hope that makes you feel good. This is probably getting too long. I can ramble.

So thank you so much for your show and congratulations on approaching 500 episodes. Thanks, Sarah. Thank you so much, Sarah. There are a few things in that one that really are encouraging to me. One is the stimulation of curiosity. I have never understood why other people weren't interested in money because to me, I find it a really interesting subject.

And one of the things I've loved doing in personal interaction with people frequently has been able to take a goal that they have and then relate that to money because every goal that you have relates to money in some way. Every goal you have relates to money in some way.

It doesn't have to be the big things, but it often relates in the small ways. And so taking a love that I can help encourage that interest in finance and financial matters and then my hope is that you'll be able to take that and encourage that interest in others because many times the people who express the strongest and most vociferously that they're not interested in money are the ones who most importantly need to be interested in the careful management of the money that's under their stewardship.

The other thing that really encourages me is just hearing about the reevaluation of life and priorities. This is a fundamental tactic that I think is so valuable for us to continually do. Just a tip that I've said frequently is just take each month one different area of your life and of your finances and think it through.

You can't solve everything in one sit down or in one meeting. But if you're working on your income, each month take a different way of increasing your income. If you're working on your expenses, each month take a different budget category and just think about it. Talk about it with your husband or your wife.

Talk about it and say, "Here is what we're doing. Here is what I want to keep doing. Here's what we love and here's what we don't." And if you're living in a house and you say, "We love this house. We love this neighborhood." Great. You're going to feel really good about continuing that.

But if you find you're living in a house that you just kind of continued living in without a lot of thought, well, get rid of the thing and move on to something else that you're really going to enjoy. So much of the time we get roped into this approach where we just kind of continue with the inertia of past decisions even though present circumstances have changed.

And we don't stop to recognize that. Jorge: Good morning, Joshua. My name is Jorge and I am currently living in the Northeast out in Southern Maryland. I would like to let you know that the first episode that I first heard was episode 302 talking about a person that lived out in a rural area out in Georgia.

And it just resonated with me so much because I got put out in the middle of nowhere due to the career that I was in. And at the time I just wanted to run back home and not come back anymore. However, I listened to all the tips and all the advice that you gave to the gentleman to be able to either live in an RV or live a simpler lifestyle while he was making a decent salary out in this rural area.

My next few episodes that I heard was 379 I believe talking about being politically correct and not holding any bars on what you were going to say. And I really respect that and what you're doing. Also another one that really resonated was ERE which is a book that I ended up getting later in life.

And I just read it a couple months ago and I've been implementing the strategies that it's been telling me. So I've been doing a lot more bike riding work and I've been able to save up and reuse a lot of the old stuff that I have. So at the end of this year I'll pretty much be debt free besides my mortgage which Dave Ramsey is another podcast that I have for years and the Mattifiantis Brandon are the ones that I listen to on a daily basis.

I listen to them while I'm biking or working out at the gym. So while everybody's listening to other kinds of music or other kinds of things I'm listening to either Bible studies or to your podcasts. Finally I want to let you know that the episode 388 on drunkenness really resonated well with me.

At that time I had gotten sick with acid reflux and I didn't know what was going on with me. So finally I got diagnosed with that. So I decided to give up alcohol and that episode really resonated well and it was just another reason to never drink again. So I think about eight or nine months now I just kind of haven't had a sip of anything really and I'm not looking forward to getting anything back into it.

Also during this time frame I've been able to open up my Bible a lot more doing a lot more Bible study. I joined the choir at church and I'm doing that sort of deal just to distract me or not distract me but to focus myself further. So this is a little bit about me.

Thank you for everything you do and many blessings to you and your family as well sir and I hope to meet you soon or one day. Thank you. Horvath, thank you so much for making the time to share that with me and I hope to meet you as well.

I try to go from here and there to a few different public events where it's easy or also if you ever come to Florida I always try to meet up with listeners. Anytime listeners come through in the future I'm sure that we'll do some specific radical personal finance events when possible.

And I love hearing those stories. I think in any situation that we're in, in a rural situation, there's a place to look at it and say what are the benefits of being here and what are the benefits of being or any situation that we're in. For those new listeners, ERE is Early Retirement Extreme and that is Jacob Lundfisker's excellent book.

It's one of the better books. It's the best book on early retirement and it really resonates with me. One thing I really appreciate about Jacob is that he's a systems thinker and he doesn't think in terms of just specific tactics. He thinks in terms of the principles and the systems that can be applied in every circumstance.

Congratulations on being debt-free, Jorge. Interesting, the other two episodes that you mentioned, 379 where I just shared I'm taking the filter off, that was very, very important to me and not easy to do in our modern world but I felt good about that and we'll be continuing even more.

Then also 388, it was interesting. I had a whole bunch of feedback on 388 where I just talked about – I can't remember what I titled the episode but I was just trying to say like why do we celebrate drunkenness? For sake of clarity, I wasn't entirely saying don't ever drink alcohol.

Many people make that choice about once every few months, I'll have an alcoholic drink but I was standing against drunkenness and I love hearing that feedback. Even if you completely abstain from alcohol, there's almost nothing positive that comes from alcohol with the exception of the enjoyment in the moment.

For many people, just completely abstaining from alcohol is a path to clarity of mind, reinvigoration of energy and purpose, et cetera. But I was standing against a culture of drunkenness where we celebrate drunkenness and so the reason I was saying feedback, some people of course were very annoyed and frustrated about here's Joshua preaching and moralizing, et cetera.

But I had a bunch of emails from listeners who said, "Thank you. Alcohol destroyed my life. My dad was a drunk," or "Alcohol destroyed my marriage," et cetera. There's no trifling thing to be played with so I appreciate the kind words, very encouraging to me. Hey, Josh. The reason I listen to Radical Personal Finance is because I wanted to get a perspective from somebody who has been on the inside without all the fluff and without somebody trying to sell me something.

Unfortunately, I find that everywhere you look when it comes to financial information, it's written by those who can profit from me and as a physician making a high income, I find that I'm a very easy target for these people. So Radical Personal Finance has helped me understand the financial environment a little bit better and it's helped me understand that there's a huge difference between a high income and wealth.

And so that's what Radical Personal Finance has done for me. I have my own financial advisor and I have done a lot of my own education on the side but I tune into you mostly because I want to hear your commentary. So I want to hear you blab, as others have said, about what you think on various topics.

It's actually interesting to hear your thought process and that's really what I'm tuning into. I believe you're well-read and I do think that your perspective on the personal finance space is very unique. So I'm going to be continuing to listen and hopefully learning a lot. The main changes that I have undertaken is that I started rethinking my idea about building wealth.

In the past, it was all about mutual funds and the common index funds and now it's more about investing in myself and investing in my side interests outside of medicine and trying to build social networks, trying to build other ways of generating income. Not so much because I'm trying to build even more wealth but because I feel that there is a lot more that a person can give back to the world and it starts with me and that's what I'm investing in.

I don't have anything to add to that other than amen. One comment with regard to hearing the thought process, this one has been interesting for me and I agree with you. When I turn into people that I enjoy hearing, one of the things that I like to hear is how they think and what they think.

The forum of media provides a really good platform for that because it's a very open place. You can listen to somebody that you may not spend a lot of time with if you were in-person with friends but you can hear how somebody thinks. The challenge is as a speaker, it's one of the more difficult things to do effectively because it's very humbling to have yourself out there and have your ideas out there and have them subject to the archives of history and the test of time.

It's very, very challenging but I will do more and more of this in days to come. For example, I anticipate in coming days, I want to do an essay on – or a show on what I think the next decade or so holds. I've been very concerned about the coming decades here in the United States and I've thought a lot about it and it's very humbling to do that because there's a good chance I'll be wrong in much of what I say.

But I know that I owe it to you as a listener to share that with you in the spirit of friendship, just to say – just as if we were sitting down talking over a drink, then I would say here's what I think and here's what you think. In the media world, that's really tough though because there's so much pride that we want to maintain and so much professionalism, et cetera.

But I think that when people like me walk away from that, being willing to be vulnerable, being willing to say what we think, I think we lose one of the benefits of niche media and we go back and recreate all of the problems of the large corporate media and I don't want to go there.

So expect much more of that in the future. I have the same philosophy with interviews. I get a good amount of flack sometimes for when I'm doing an interview with somebody saying – speaking and sharing my thoughts and my opinions and not speaking like an NPR reporter. I've often thought about that because certainly if you study interviewing, they say, "Well, you should just be a reporter." But I'm not a reporter and I don't want to be a reporter.

So I've chosen to insert my opinion, insert my ideas because that's what I like to listen to. I love that in a world of free media, other people can go and do NPR stuff and I can do this. Thank you for listening and enjoying that. Fritz Endrejkos - Hey, Joshua.

This is Fritz from The Retirement Manifesto just giving you a shout out on your show. Fantastic show. I can't tell you the impact it's had on my life. No doubt in my mind that listening to your podcast during my three-hour commute for several years was a main driver in us deciding to pursue early retirement, me launching my blog, and just all kinds of exciting things in our lives.

So love what you're doing and we'll keep in touch. Thanks. Trevor Burrus - I just saw Fritz this last weekend at FinCon out in Texas and he's had a bunch of changes, even approaching retirement. I'm going to have him back on the show soon to share some of those things because I think he's intelligently approaching those and it's a good lesson of how what you set out to do isn't always what you do in the long run.

Josh Wittman - Hey, Josh. Just got done listening to a couple of your episodes as I was driving in and out of San Francisco today for some client meetings and congrats as you're closing in on 500 episodes. That's an amazing accomplishment and I wanted to share very quickly what the show has kind of meant for me and done for me over time.

So I myself skew younger and less white than your demographic according to a recent episode of yours as well, but nonetheless still a pretty high income earner and that was really what got me into FIRE. When I graduated from school about two years ago, I was in a sales job in the Silicon Valley, low base salary but there's that commission portion.

My first quarter I did so much better than I had anticipated that I would, ended up making essentially double what I was planning to make. So when I graduated, I had no student loan debt. I had worked through school. My parents had helped me with the tuition, but at the same time I had no real savings either.

So basically by the time I moved and bought new furniture and stuff, I probably had about $500 to my name when I started my job. And three months into that job, getting that commission check and going from that to over $10,000 in one go to get in that five-figure range right away, I decided, "Man, I got to figure out what I'm going to do with this money." And that was how I found you.

That's how I found financial independence as like a financial philosophy and your show has been absolutely instrumental. One of my main tools for learning all of this information, where to invest things. Your episode about the 401(k) versus the Roth IRA is one of my favorite single podcast episodes, period.

And I've listened and tuned into your show pretty much every week since. And not just influencing the way that I've saved, but I've loved podcasting as a medium for a long time and it actually inspired me to also launch my own podcast called The Wealthy Healthy. And I've been at for a couple of months now targeting a younger audience, more like the 101s of personal finance as opposed to your kind of master's level courses content that you like to kind of bill your show as in the podcast.

But nonetheless, then there is a skew that's outside of finance on that show as well. So definitely though, it's been hugely inspired by your show and that's largely because I have been so inspired by your show. So thank you so much for creating this content and sharing it with everybody.

I know for myself, it's been a huge, huge influencer in my own process of understanding where to save and how to save. And I've been able to increase my savings rate over time and to continue to do that as I get raises has been, it's afforded me so much peace of mind.

I think that's the biggest, biggest thing is that if something happens, if there's a recession and my job disappears for any reason, I actually, I've only been saving and working for less than two years now, but I have months and months and months, I think actually years now, a few years that I would be able to live and I would actually be able to live more frugally than I do now as well.

And that's also largely, I know that largely because of your show as well. That peace of mind of knowing that I could be unemployed for a year or two and it would not put me into the negative is an unbelievable, there's an unbelievable power to that. And that peace of mind that I have just at that basic sort of low level of savings that I have currently, it's been amazing.

And so I really have to thank you for that. Congrats on hitting 500. I'm going to keep tuning in and I hope that you continue to create this content. Thanks Josh. It's really, really amazing because it puts you in a situation where in the beginning stages of your life, you have choices.

When I started recording Radical Personal Finance four years ago, I didn't have some – I didn't have a clear philosophy that I was willing to say, "This is the philosophy." But I'll tell you one thing that has become clearer. I no longer – I encourage basically all young people, first goal, 10 grand in the bank and that's what you described, 10 grand in the bank.

Once you have 10 grand in the bank, there are almost – there's almost – you have tremendous flexibility. Second goal, 100 grand in the bank. When you got 100 grand in the bank available to you, available to you, not locked away in some retirement account that you have some emotional hangup out of taking out, but 100 grand available to you, there is almost no life choice that you can't make.

You can move from here to anywhere. You can change from this job to that job. You can start just about any business that you'd like to pursue. You have freedom and you have a huge degree of autonomy and independence. I despise the way that we – that was a little strong.

I don't like the way that we in the world run by the modern financial orthodoxy, we take everyone's money and we put it away from them. So there are lots of people that I've counseled that have 100 grand but it's locked up in a 401(k) account. Now, that's a bit of a mirage.

You can still get it out but it takes – that comes with a lot of hardship. So I love hearing the freedom that you get. So check out the podcast, The Wealthy Healthy, and I love that you are – that you've built your own and that you're building your own.

I encourage every listener, build some little media project because there needs to be a diversity of voices, people who are able to speak different languages, both separate languages that are unintelligible to one another and speak in a different language to people. I speak in a certain type of the English language and that appeals to a certain person but it doesn't appeal to other people.

So what I want you to do is to go and to articulate the things that I have to share in your own words for someone else. So any other listeners who would be interested in hearing The Wealthy Healthy podcast, the 101s of personal finance, check it out in the iTunes store.

Are you ready? Here we go. Okay. I am a chemical engineer and apparently I'm rare because even though I'm the lady of the household, I'm the one who takes care of the budgeting, taxes, and investing. It's what I like to do and my husband just likes me to tell him how much money he can spend so that's what works for us.

He's an electrical engineer and together we've been working towards early retirement since 2012. I found Radical Personal Finance in 2016 after I got tired of listening to the repetitive but highly addictive Dave Ramsey. I was on maternity leave with my first child at the time. That's her in the background.

I was going back and forth between my desire to return to work and my instinct to stay at home and take care of her full time. The first episode of Radical Personal Finance that I listened to was Why You Should Buy a Minivan. It seemed interesting. The next few I listened to were about how to live a good life now rather than wait until you're retired.

That was something I hadn't heard or read anywhere else. Everyone focuses so much on that end goal and Joshua was here telling me how we could live a good life even though we hadn't reached our financial goals yet and that's what helped me stay home. That's what I am doing full time now.

Although it slowed down our retirement, it's given us this wonderful opportunity to raise our child by a loving parent rather than daycare. That has just been such a good decision for us. Never regretted it. The more I listen to Radical Personal Finance, I just feel better about that step away from employeehood because there are so many other ways to earn a living.

He also pointed me at Mr. Money Mustache who of course is just a whole different rabbit hole of how to live a good life and not need employment to the same extent. I would say one of the most empowering episodes Joshua has put out is the one about explaining different types of business entities.

That was information I just never absorbed before. I didn't go to business school and I've just never read a lot about it, but after listening to it, I just felt for the first time that I really could own my own business because I just never even would have known where to start before.

And then of course there's all the tax information which you're just not going to get that information anywhere else. Forget about tax professionals. They're just not going to tell you this stuff. And it's a free, easy listening format. So there's just nothing like it. I've heard it said that Joshua rambles, but as a stay-at-home mom, I have to say I appreciate the fact that listening to Joshua feels like he's just having a conversation with me and all his other listeners.

So I really enjoy that. And he'll be the first one to tell you to listen to him at at least a two-time speed. So that's everything I've gotten out of Radical Personal Finance. I'm so glad to have it. There's no other podcast like it. And I'm very grateful for Joshua continuing to do this work.

Listen to me at 2x or higher if you can do it. Well, in the spirit of having a conversation, I want to just share something here. I may do a standalone episode on this, but I wanted to share my heart for a moment here because I was just struck by a piece from last weekend's Wall Street Journal from the Saturday-Sunday October 28-29, 2017 article.

If there's one thing that I'm very proud of, very proud of, it's the fact that I have taught hundreds and hundreds of husbands and wives how they can financially justify the decision for a mom to be home with their babies. Because there is so much pressure on young mothers that the only element of self-worth is a matter of career.

And young moms feel this pressure so intensely. And so I love the fact – I'm very proud. So far, your call may be my favorite because of just hearing about the impact that you're having because I know the long-term effect of you being home with your babies. Now, I get a lot of flack being – I don't even know what to call myself – over issues like this because people want to politicize it.

I want to read you a few paragraphs here of this article. It's called "The Politicization of Motherhood" from the opinion section of last weekend's Wall Street Journal. And in my mind, it's almost the perfect example of how broken our society is with our ability to talk with one another.

This is the weekend interview with Erika Komisar written by James Toronto. New York – "Motherhood used to be as American as apple pie. Nowadays it can be as antagonistic as American politics. Ask Erika Komisar." Ms. Komisar, 53, is a Jewish psychoanalyst who lives and practices on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

If that biographical thumbnail leads you to stereotype her as a political liberal, you're right. She tells me she has become "a bit of a pariah" on the left because of the book she published this year, "Being There, Why Prioritizing Motherhood in the First Three Years Matters." Christian radio stations "interviewed me and loved me," she says.

She went on Fox & Friends and "the host was like, 'Your book is the best thing since the invention of the refrigerator.' But I couldn't get on NPR, and I was rejected wholesale, particularly in New York, by the liberal press." She did appear on ABC's Good Morning America, but seconds before the camera went live, she says the interviewer told her, "I don't believe in the premise of your book at all.

I don't like your book." The premise of Ms. Komisar's book, backed by research in psychology, neuroscience, and epigenetics, is that "mothers are biologically necessary for babies," and not only for the obvious reasons of pregnancy and birth. "Babies are much more neurologically fragile than we've ever understood," Ms. Komisar says.

She cites the view of one neuroscientist, Nim Tottenham of Columbia University, "that babies are born without a central nervous system," and "mothers are the central nervous system to babies," especially for the first nine months after birth. What does that mean? I'm going to quit with the quoting thing. I usually don't do it, so forgive me for being unprofessional.

What does that mean? Every time a mother comforts a baby in distress, she's actually regulating that baby's emotions from the outside in. After three years, the baby internalizes that ability to regulate their emotions, but not until then. For that reason, mothers need to be there as much as possible, both physically and emotionally for children in the first 1,000 days.

The regulatory mechanism is oxytocin, a neurotransmitter popularly known as the "love hormone." Oxytocin, Ms. Komisar explains, is a buffer against stress. Mothers produce it when they give birth, breastfeed, or otherwise nurture their children. The more oxytocin the mother produces, the more she produces it in the baby by communicating via eye contact, touch, and gentle talk.

The baby's brain, in turn, develops oxytocin receptors, which allow for self-regulation at a later age. Women produce more oxytocin than men do, which answers the obvious question of why fathers aren't as well-suited as mothers for this sort of sensitive, empathetic nurturing. "People want to feel that men and women are fungible," observes Ms.

Komisar, "but they aren't, at least not when it comes to parental roles." Fathers produce a different nurturing hormone known as vasopressin, what we call the protective, aggressive hormone. Whereas a mother of a crying baby will lean into the pain and say, "Oh, honey," a father is more apt to tell the child, "Come on, you're okay.

Brush yourself off. Let's go back to play." Children, especially boys, need that paternal nurturing to learn to control their aggression and become self-sufficient. But during the first stages of childhood, motherly love is more vital. Ms. Komisar's interest in early childhood development grew out of her three decades' experience treating families, first as a clinical social worker and later as an analyst.

What I was seeing was an increase in children being diagnosed with ADHD and an increase in aggression in children, particularly in little boys, and an increase in depression in little girls. More youngsters were also being diagnosed with social disorders whose symptoms resembled those of autism, having difficulty relating to other children, having difficulty with empathy.

As Ms. Komisar started to put the pieces together, she found that the absence of mothers in children's lives on a daily basis was what I saw to be one of the triggers for these mental disorders. She began to devour the scientific literature and found that it reinforced her intuition.

Her interest became a preoccupation. My husband would say I was a one-note Charlie, she recalls. I would come home and I would rant and I would say, "Oh my God, I'm seeing these things. I've got to write a book about it." That was 12 years ago. She followed her own advice and held off working on the book because her own young children, two sons and a daughter, still needed her to be emotionally and physically present.

Now it goes on and talks about the fact that she is a liberal Democrat and it talks about how basically there's been a tremendous rebuff of her from both sides of the political spectrum because the liberals don't like the fact that she says that mothers and fathers are not interchangeable and that children need mothers and the conservatives don't like the fact that her proposed solutions for how to do better are long-term paid parental leave required to be paid to mothers by their employers.

Now this is certainly a rabbit trail here simply because this essay has been sitting on my desk the last few days and as I listen to your email, I can't help but put it in here. But one of the things that I am sick and tired of and I make no apologies for is the fact that we cannot filter the things we do through politics.

Liberal progressives would love to be that there's no difference between moms and dads. Liberal progressives would love it if it didn't matter if a mom were home with her children. But I think any of us who are parents, any of us who've been around children can see the difference in that.

Now, unless you think I'm picking on you, my dear liberal friends, I've probably got more issues with conservatives. So just on this particular issue, it's valuable. But it's so gratifying to me to hear that you've made the decision that you've made because you will reap the benefits of that for decades and you'll reap it in almost every aspect of your life.

You'll reap it in healthier children that don't have to be drugged in order to fit into society. You'll reap it with children who will learn in the first few years of their life the vocabulary that they need to be able to communicate effectively, the coping skills, the ability for them to have appropriate nonviolent interaction with other children and with adults.

You will set your children on the fast track because of that decision. And I could give you book after book after book after book. So I'm really proud of that. And going forward, one of the things that I need to do much more of is to ignore the people who want me to politicize my thoughts and fit into a box.

This is destroying our ability to search for and find things that are true. Because what we're doing is we're building a reality that we wish were true that's just simply not. And I don't want to participate. So thank you for calling in with your story. And I encourage – let me make a note.

I will add – I'll try to add a link to the Wall Street Journal article. It's called "The Politicization of Motherhood." And I'll add a link to that in the show notes on today's show. Perhaps we'll cover it more in the future. Andy Tyson Hey, Joshua. My name is Andy Tyson.

I'm a 26-year-old junior army officer living in Savannah, Georgia, getting ready to make a move to central Missouri. First and foremost, I just want to thank you for what you do. The show you provide is a great service to me and all of your listeners. I apologize for any poor audio.

I'm in my car waiting for our morning little physical training to start. To give you a little background on who I am and what I enjoy, like I mentioned earlier, I'm currently in the military. My wife and I are planning to transition out of the military in about a year and a half.

I certainly enjoy it. We're looking forward to the stability that civilian life allows, being able to be closer to family for a longer period of time. She's a CPA, and I am hoping to get into some sort of manufacturing industry, whether it be working for Toyota, maybe a construction company, something where I can put some project management skills to work.

What I enjoy in my personal time is woodworking, and that's actually how I came across your podcast. I listen to some woodworking podcasts on the side, primarily like the Wood Talk guys, Mark Spagnuolo, Matt Cremona, Shannon Rogers. If you're a woodworker, check them out. They're awesome. All these guys are entrepreneurs.

They market themselves as online educators. Being entrepreneurs, they have to be very careful with their money and their financial planning. Somehow, it led me on a path to your podcast, which I obviously enjoy and have since subscribed to. The positive impact of your show is really twofold. On a more professional side, I'm trying to scale my hobby, woodworking business, which I've dubbed Chronic Woodwork.

For a little plug, you can find me on Instagram or Facebook. I've taken some of your skills to try and ramp that into more of a small-scale business. It's something I do as a hobby, but if I can use my hobby time to make money for my family, even better.

On a personal scale, transitioning from the Army is a little bit of a scary time for me. My wife and I are expecting a baby girl in June. To step away from the stability that the military offers is a bold choice, at least in my opinion. I'm taking that to prepare myself financially, to take some lessons learned so I can lead our family in the right direction, raise this child the right way where she has a responsible, healthy relationship with money, and our family has the financial stability that we need to walk away from the military.

I think in all, that's probably enough rambling for one day. I really appreciate your time. If there's anything I can ever do to repay my debt of gratitude to you in the future, please let me know. Thanks. Bye. And I'm glad that the show's been helpful for you. I don't know your Instagram, but come on by the show page and comment, and I'd love to link for that.

And in my previous comments on the politicization of motherhood, I'm really glad to hear that as a father, you'll be able to be closer with your children. It is very, very tough on children, as you know, for their fathers to be deployed, especially to be deployed for extensive periods of time.

The military is hard on families, and so if I can help you make that transition, I'm very happy about that work as well. Hi, my name is Matt. I am from Australia. I am 22 years old. I currently work full-time at a department store earning a basic income, as well as studying part-time in web development.

I discovered Radical Personal Finance about a week or two ago when I was bored of my audio book and wanted to find some podcasts. I've dabbled a little bit with the personal finance side by playing with YNAB on and off for a while. I was never consistent with it, but I did find it helped.

When I started listening to Radical Personal Finance, I got hooked pretty quickly. I listened to about 10 episodes in the past week, and I'm still going strong. I've never been the strongest saver, mostly just spending things on computer parts because they're awesome. And yeah, I spend probably 90% of my income every week just on things and food.

Even though I'm fairly new to your podcast, I feel like I've learned a whole heap so far. I've been more frugal with my spending, cutting back on coffees and takeaways, as well as walking to work instead of driving a whole two kilometers or about a mile and a bit, I think.

It's been good. I've even been trying to read more. I went to the library, which is very close to home, and I borrowed a personal finance book called The One Page Financial Plan. That book has been pretty good so far, and I'm keen to read more personal finance books.

I'm looking forward to learning about investing in the stock market so I can send my money to work and earn me some more. I feel as though you've opened the door to personal finance, and I can't wait to learn more. Thank you very much for this. Trevor Burrus: Well, thank you, Matt.

And FYI, the author of The One Page Financial Plan, Carl Richards, has been on Radical Personal Finance, and that was episode – I don't have it, so I apologize. He's been on Radical Personal Finance. Just search for that in the show. Remember, the way that you get out from being an entry-level department store worker is education.

And so you've got to learn more that's helpful in the marketplace so that you can increase your earning ability. It's a long process, but it will compound over time. And so take this time and dedicate it deeply to your own learning and your study. Elizabeth Waddington: Hi, Joshua. This is Elizabeth, and I've been listening to your podcast for one year now.

I want to share with you and your audience how your podcast has improved my family's financial life over this past year. Last year, our net worth was $3,000. This year, our net worth is $50,000. We've achieved that growth by having a $35,000 higher savings rate, $6,000 in market gains, and we've paid $6,000 towards our car loan.

So our savings rate has made the biggest difference for us during this past year. When I found your podcast, I was looking for help in shifting my mindset. The most basic shift for me so far has been saving more and spending less. Over this past year, we've changed from spending extra income on vacations, toys, and consumer debt.

Now we use our extra income to achieve our financial goals more quickly. Another big change for us has been being more mindful of how our assets and strengths can help us to make more money. My husband has a good job with the government. We're happy with his salary, but an added benefit in his career is a lot of time off.

My husband has been using his knowledge, interest, and extra time to build a business over the past few years. This year in particular, we've noticed his business is growing. Last March, he had zero partnerships with dealers. At this time, his products are available in three different stores, and there are still more interested retailers.

I've also been more aware of how I use my own strengths to help build what is now our family business. We found a lot of enjoyment in nourishing this asset together. We have short-term, mid-term, and long-term goals for our financial life now, and we also have made detailed plans that we can actually follow in order to achieve our goals for different phases of our lives.

Your episodes on risk management have helped us to increase our family's stability. My husband's job is high risk. During this past year, we've increased our life insurance and made plans for how we can handle disability if that were to happen. I sleep more easily because of this. Your podcast has also helped me to expand my education in personal finance because of your book reviews, interviews of other podcasters and bloggers, and the different ideas listeners share on the RPF Facebook page.

Thank you for your spotlight on these helpful resources. And Joshua, thank you also for this opportunity for me to share and hear other listeners talk about our growth as a result of your podcast. It's awesome and it's uplifting. Thank you. I love it. The debt being paid down, people saving money, starting businesses, family businesses.

Sweet. Exciting. Hey, Joshua. I just wanted to give you the voice memo here in response to your request for how Radical Personal Finance has really been helpful, impactful in my life. And just to give you a little backstory, I've always really been interested in finance. I was an economics and math major in college and when I graduated in 2014, went off to be a financial advisor.

And that's really about when I found your show, a little bit after that, I think maybe 2015. But it was really helpful just since I was very new to the space at that point in time in terms of just giving me more confidence and the knowledge that I needed to be good at my job and to help clients that really needed it.

Then also just spilling over into my own life, it was really helpful for just giving me insight as to the steps I need to take for my own finances to be very dedicated and very thoughtful and purposeful in terms of what my financial goals were and outlining those out.

Consequently, it's also sparked my interest in trying to retire early just so I have the freedom to be able to pursue my passions the way I want to. Even those that aren't really as financially rewarding, but are still things that I would enjoy doing. As such, I'm trying my hand at what you were doing there, which is being a little bit of an entrepreneur and starting my own website called the Financiardreams.org.

Nothing to write home about just yet, but doing my best to try to get things off the ground there and seeing where it takes me from there. Maybe I'll be able to reach out to you in a bit here for a possible interview spot. But again, thank you for all that you do and take care.

Best of luck with the episode 500. Remember this, when you build a website and you start writing, even if nobody reads, you'll be better off. The mark of success is not acceptance by the marketplace. You will learn and you will be better off just simply from that work. So Financiardreams.org for my listeners writing and I'd be happy to if you can serve my audience with great ideas.

I'd be happy to have you on the show. That's my litmus test. If you wonder about how to get on Radical Personal Finance, no, you can't pay me to get on the show. Those of you who've tried, not going to work. No, I don't care how many other shows you've been on.

What I care is can you serve my audience and help me to fulfill my mission of helping by providing the knowledge, skill, insight, and encouragement that my listeners need to live a rich and meaningful life now while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less. If you're on Radical Personal Finance, just send me an email.

But tell me how you're going to serve my audience. Don't give me this nonsense about how cool you are. Tell me how you're going to serve my audience and help me fulfill that mission and I'd love to have you on. By the way, that's for anybody. If you have anything.

One thing I try to do and I've tried to do and I'm going to do even more is I try to keep the guests and the perspectives very diverse. And by that I mean I want to interview normal people. I'm going to be doing many more interviews. I've shut down interviews in the past months just because I couldn't keep up with it in light with everything else that I was doing.

So I've just basically done solo shows. But I'll be doing more interviews. But I want to interview experts. But experts often only speak expertise and they just kind of go on and on with their expertise. But normal people can help other normal people. And so I don't want the show to just be all Mr.

Financial Planner or whatnot. So if you have an idea, if there's something that you think would serve my audience, I want to hear from you. I love to profile normal people and we're going to do much more of that in days to come. Hey Joshua, my name is Scarlett.

I live in Texas and I'd like to share two podcast episodes that made an impact on our everyday actions. The first podcast episode was the one where you talked about saving for college and you presented the notion, why save all this money for something in the future when instead you could be putting that money to investing in your child now.

And I really love that. I was initially listening to that episode because I was concerned about tax optimized college savings since we are in a high income tax rate. However, we also live in Texas, which has no income taxes. So a 529 wouldn't really benefit us. And this podcast really opened up my eyes to things beyond the actual financials of college.

If I'm willing to save $200 a month for my son's college, why couldn't I spend 20 bucks a month on, for instance, a tinker crate, these little construction kits that's something I know my son would love. So we did. So we got a subscription to Tinker Crate and it's been really fun spending an afternoon with him assembling these different projects.

So far we've made a hydraulic claw and a fiber optic constellation map and he loves it. So thank you. The second podcast episode that I wanted to share was the one where you talked about why wait until FI to live like you're FI. So my family, we are on our way to FI and I appreciate the notion to live a more balanced life now.

And this podcast really got me daydreaming about what I would actually do if I were an FI and what I could do now. One of those dreams is to have a garden. So we're renting a house and I didn't really allow myself to indulge in starting a garden. It felt like a waste of time because after all we're renting, we don't know how long we'll be here.

But after listening to that podcast, I thought, wait a second, I am living here right now though and there's no actual barriers to starting a garden. My landlord doesn't mind. There's no reason for me not to start one. It's something that brings me joy. So I did. I went to a tomato workshop that was put on by a nearby organic farm and they taught us how using their methods, most tomato plants get five to 10 pounds of tomatoes per plant.

But with this one, these methods, you can get like 50 pounds of tomatoes per plant. So after 20 bucks and about $100 worth of supplies, I have a super cool tomato garden growing in my backyard. Thank you so much for all you do. I appreciate your podcast and how it gets me to think differently.

I love that story. It's so cool. I love that story. Remember also that if you are renting, you can garden in containers. There are so many people who have developed just tremendous gardens and all in containers. So it sounds like you can always till up the backyard and do that.

But even container gardening can move with you to some degree. Also there are some really cool ways of gardening where you can garden indoors. You can focus on gardening the things that are appropriate. So I love that you said, "No, I'm not going to wait until I'm rich to garden.

I'm going to figure out a way to do it now." And I love that you're doing that with your children as well. I feel more strongly about it today than I did when I recorded that show that financially, even if we just did it financially, as you said, what if you took that money you were sending to your child's 529 plan and you used it to finance things that could be useful now, whether that's purchasing books for them.

There are so many world-class books that you can buy and that you have available. And a lot of times to get the best books, it seems to me like you got to buy them often or you need to subscribe. One thing that I am excited to see here where I live in South Florida, I found somebody who's built a living library.

So those of you who are familiar with the concept of living books, using living books comes from the Charlotte Mason tradition of education, using just living books for children. I found somebody who's built a living library, but it costs money to support. And I want to see that succeed so much.

I'd rather spend my money to have a subscription to the living library of these carefully curated collections of living books for my children rather than to go into something that's going to see 20 years down the road. And then one other idea that I just was loving in an email that I received from a listener who I'll be playing their voicemail in the show, they sent me an email when they were at a yes day that they did with their child.

And so they're trying to say, as often as parents, we spend so much time saying no. With their little children, they were saying, "What can we do that would say yes and just do all the cool things that our children would enjoy and say yes to some of those adventures?" And they were off at some local career thing where they were all pretending to be veterinarians, just the coolest thing ever.

And yet we're often so stressed and we don't want to take the time off from work and we're too busy and we don't have the money, et cetera. And we miss those first four, five, six, eight years. Let's just call it 10 years, that crucial formative 10 years from zero or two to 10 or 12.

That's childhood. Beyond that, that's adulthood. But it's childhood. And so many parents think so much about college, worrying about college, college, college, instead of looking down and saying, "Well, wait a second. What about childhood?" If you get childhood right, college can take care of itself, but you can't fix in college what you messed up in childhood.

Hello, Joshua. This is Allison from Virginia. Congratulations on 500 episodes. Thank you for all the time and energy you have put into building Radical Personal Finance over the years. I really enjoy your podcast and the insights you provide. Thank you for introducing me to topics and ideas I would not otherwise have been exposed to.

I really have learned a lot through your podcasts and interviews. I've always loved personal finance and you had me hooked. So in the very beginning when you reviewed the book early, Retirement Extreme, anyone that could talk for that long about a book, I knew it was going to be interesting.

I love how you take on topics large and small, and I love that you use your financial planner calculator to add in math into the discussion. You can even make an insurance an interesting topic. Specifically, I want to thank you for causing me to really think about what kind of lifestyle my family wants now and wants retired and how we can give back to our community.

My family is in a good financial place. I'm a nurse. My husband's in the Air Force. We have really solid jobs and retirement plans, so all we really need is small tweaks to ensure we're comfortable. Most finance shows are all about building up money fast or paying off debt fast, but yours really is about why.

Why do we want the money? What can I do for us? How can I help our family and others? How to be more efficient with the money we have? So I really appreciate that you really take the time to talk about why we're doing this. So thank you again.

Keep up the great work and get some rest before your new baby gets here. Bye. As you could tell, that one did come in a few months ago. Thank you, Allison. I appreciate hearing from you and congratulations to you guys on all your success. Always remember this. The money is necessary, but the money is not the goal.

There's going to be something else, and if you want to live like you're rich today, a big component of that is going to be, let me look around and see what kind of changes I'd like to see in my local community. If you look at people who are rich, once they get really, really rich, usually they're so busy getting rich that they don't stop until they're really rich, and they finally look around and say, "Oh, wait a second.

What do I actually want my life to mean?" And they look around and they pick a cause and then they start donating money. Well, that's fine, but don't wait. Do it now. Joshua, hi. It's Peter Steinberg on April the 3rd, 2017, six o'clock at night in Boston, Massachusetts. The Red Sox home opener just ended.

I just got home from work. I have no clue who won, and I'm about to go to the art museum with my girlfriend. Your show has been great. I've been a listener since the beginning, and I've been on the show, as you recall, talking about having a career as a physician.

Your show has been wonderful. I mean, at the very least, I listen to you all the time, and you always provide me new and interesting ways to think about how I can expand from my base of operations as a physician. I think that several of the things that I've done since listening to your show that have been different, I think I've taken a much more critical eye on my portfolio of investments, and I've been more active in seeking alternative investment vehicles than conventional mutual funds and stocks, although most of my portfolio still is mutual funds and stocks.

But I'm very critically looking at new investment vehicles, and I bounce these ideas off my father, who's a financial planner, and my brother, who has an opposite investment view from myself. He invests in private businesses. He's a part owner of a brewery, and he's got a lot of real estate holdings.

We're totally opposite, but we keep bouncing ideas off of each other. I've sent a lot of your episodes to friends of mine, specifically as related to things like trying to pay down a mortgage versus trying to get more investment income. That's been a very popular topic. Your student loan discussions have been very, very helpful.

I work with residents who have medical school debt, and a variety of them have listened to your episode with Jay Gardner about management of debt. So those have been several of the big things. But me personally, I've derived hours and hours and hours of enjoyment out of listening to your show.

I really enjoy being a guest on your show, and I really enjoy taking your info and spreading it around to other people. And personally, I keep looking at my portfolio and seeing where I can get yield. So congratulations on your 500th episode coming up, and here's to 500 more.

Amen. Well, Peter, it was a great interview on the show. So go back and check the archives for Peter Steinberg. We talked about, is medicine a good path to wealth? It was a really excellent episode in the archives. And also, Peter, I love that you've opened your mind to other approaches to investing.

When I left the financial advice industry, the professional world, I wondered about the fact that basically all we ever talked about was stocks and bonds and mutual funds. And I had this pretty strong opinion that many of the people that I worked with that were wealthy didn't get wealthy from stocks and bonds and mutual funds.

And that perspective has certainly been solidified. I've seen so much more now. And now that I kind of have those tentacles that pretty much are severed at this point, and desire to have lost any reason to kind of toe the party line, I've become more convinced of that, that there's a really important place for stocks and bonds and mutual funds.

Our ability to invest widely and well using mutual fund instruments is wonderful. It's not everything. Hi, Joshua. Congratulations on hitting 500 shows, and thank you for those 500 shows. My name is Pete, and I'm from Belfast here in Ireland. My story is that I'm 34 years old, and I'm financially independent.

I've had my own business for the last nine years. And over the course of that period, I've saved pretty much every penny that I had and invested it in Vanguard funds. Your shows have really solidified my whole theory and my whole ethos behind investing, saving really hard, and then investing everything that I haven't spent.

And generally, that's been around 85% of my salary. What I really want to thank you for is the next phase of my life, the strategy that I'm undertaking to really reduce my working hours now at this point, and spend more time with my family, and ultimately to travel extensively around the world.

So next year, we're taking three months as a sabbatical, as a mini retirement. And this has only been possible because of the mindset shift that I have undertaken through listening to your show. So thank you very much. And my wife thanks you, as does my daughter. I would bet.

I would bet they thank me. How cool is that? Isn't that awesome? Somebody's saving 85% of their income. I love hearing stories like that because it's so inspiring. And I also love that you're not going to be committed to being a miser for the rest of your life. That makes my day.

Thank you for calling in. Hey, Joshua. I remember way back, always being interested in money. My dad had me buy double E savings bonds and CDs. He didn't teach me much about investing in general, which is what I'm trying to do for my son. I find you to be very analytical.

I am not a dense or stupid person. I just don't think deeply about things. When I first listened to your podcast, I was overwhelmed by how in depth you went. At first, I thought you were a little nuts. I have to come to realize that you are an extremely deep thinker.

It has helped me to be a deep thinker. I remember reading somewhere, I don't know where, if it was your Facebook page or not, someone said they wished that you or some other finance guy was their neighbor because they would have someone to talk to about finance. I think your survey proves what I've known for years.

People don't want to talk about money because they don't have any of it. I think your listeners are savers and investors and have some money. I know a lot of people that make high incomes. I live in a pretty high income area. The average income is about $121,000 a year.

But nobody wants to talk about money because nobody has any. I had my taxes done this year and I asked my accountant about some of the surveys that are out there saying that people don't have $1,000 for an emergency. I find that hard to believe. He told me everybody is broke.

He said 90% of the people that come into his office are broke. That astounds me. I've been working since I'm 11 years old and I can tell you I don't think I've ever been broke. I agree that having someone like you as a neighbor would be beneficial. My wife is pretty much fed up with me talking finances.

That's why I love listening to your podcast. I'm familiar with most of the concepts you've talked about, but you put different twists and turns on things and go into detail that I would have never thought of. My father used to say you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.

I don't know how you're going to reach the anti-finance people out there, but if you keep doing what you're doing, they will find you when they're ready. Keep up the great work. Thanks for all you do. Ray. Ray, thanks so much. There's a great essay by Albert Nock. It's called Isaiah's Job.

It has been a very influential essay for me. Basically, the difference between Isaiah, the prophet Isaiah, Isaiah wasn't sent to reach the masses and neither am I. The people that I can serve will find me and I don't have to worry about that. One of these days I'll read that on the show, but for now you can look it up if you want.

It's called Isaiah's Job. It's helpful to know that you can't reach everybody, but there are opportunities to reach some. When people are ready, they will go looking. You mentioned about not knowing people like that and yet your accountant affirming that 80% of people are broke. It's actually one of the biggest challenges that we face and it's especially been amplified in the last couple of decades.

We tend to reflect the people that we hang out with. This is very practical. For example, if you don't have any money – sorry, if you have money and your friend doesn't have money, then let's say you want to go and take a weekend away, you feel bad about inviting your friend to go when you know they probably can't afford to take the money and go.

That happens on a small level when it comes to going out to dinner and it happens on a big level when it comes to going skiing. We generally tend to hang out with people that are kind of like us really for practicality. I used to talk about this when I was in the financial advice business with one of my fellow financial advisors.

We had money and we had time and so we could take advantage of doing things midweek and take a few days off and go and do this adventure. But yet we often reflected on how much time we ended up hanging out together because other people didn't have that control over their time, that control over their schedule.

So it's very normal that we hang out with people that are like us. But more and more in the United States, this divide between those who have and those who have not has become very, very intense. It's become geographically intense where wealthy people tend to cluster together in very tight geographic proximity and it's become very culturally intense.

Many of the institutions in the US American society that used to hold the culture together have really fallen apart. The civic clubs, the local volunteer clubs used to be that if you were an entry-level blue-collar worker, you might go down and join your local service organization and/or work in your local church or whatever it was and you might be there with the president of the – president or chairman of the board.

They were both in part there in that civic institution. But today it's no more like that. And so it's often very hard for us to see how the other half lives. When we're wealthy, it's hard for us to understand. How is it that somebody could not have $500 or $1,000?

And then when somebody doesn't have $500 or $1,000, they often don't have any wealthy friends that they can go to and ask questions. And this is one of the long-term trends that for me is deeply concerning over the coming decades. And I'm hoping that we can use the power of media to at least bridge that gap a little bit for those who are looking.

Hi, Joshua. My name is Stephan. I am a 27-year-old single guy living in New Jersey. I honestly can't remember how I stumbled across your show, but I started listening early summer of 2016 and your podcast has had an amazing impact on my financial life. A year ago, I was about $22,000 in debt and I was looking to buy a condo to add on to this debt because I thought it was the right thing to do.

But through listening to your show and listening to you give others advice, I decided to go on a different route. I decided instead to pay off all my debts. I drew out a plan and now I am literally one payment away from being debt-free. First time since I was a teenager and now I am saving money to buy my first multifamily income property in the summer of next year.

I was able to pay down my debts mainly because I still live at home rent-free. I cut my expenses drastically. I created a budget timeline and paid it off aggressively. I listened to your show same day you released the episodes. You're doing great work saving the world one episode at a time.

Keep up the great work, Josh. Love the show. Later, man. I love that. That is so encouraging to me. That's just so encouraging to see a young man changing everything. And that is exactly the reason why you should live at home during that stage. There's a huge difference between living at home with your parents as an adult child and being a freeloader, in which case your parents should kick you out the door and force you to face reality before it's too late, versus living at home with your parents as an adult child and using that strategically as a time to really establish yourself, pay off your debt, purchase investment property, whatever the actual details are.

That is a great reason for you to live at home. And then while you're there, you can enjoy the relationship, the rich relationship with your parents. And that's something that I think they should look for and you should look for. So that is a great story and I'm thrilled to hear it.

Hi, Joshua. This is Justin from Oklahoma. I've been listening to your radical personal finance for approximately six months and man, I just really love it. Your ability to provide sound financial advice while urging your listeners to focus on being financially independent for their wealth, their happiness, and their ability to give back versus simply being rich, I think could spur the financial revival American needs.

My wife and I purchased five acres and built our own home 10 years ago because we wanted to raise our boys in the country and we really couldn't afford to pay a home builder to do it. It has been a blessing in so many ways and we now have nine years left to pay off a $90,000 mortgage.

The property recently appraised for approximately $300,000. So we've decided to sell and we're going to move back into town. We're going to buy a fixer upper and we're hoping to pay somewhere between $160,000 and $200,000 to help us become debt free and begin investing in rental property sooner. We believe it's important to tithe and to give to those in need and financial independence will allow us to achieve these dreams sooner and on a much larger scale.

I appreciate your work, especially the philosophical discussions that get people to think about the why they may want to get out of debt. We're both in our mid-30s and we see so many young people without the simple skills or desire to get out of debt. We hope someday we can be inspiration for those that don't think it's possible.

God bless and take care, man. Thanks. I love it. Thanks for calling in, Justin. And definitely I'm glad you appreciate the philosophy. In the future, I think I'm going to start referring to myself as a financial philosopher when I do my intros. It's going to be Joshua the financial philosopher because frankly I get so bored by the details and the mumbo jumbo of all the math and all that.

I just get utterly bored by that. But I love the philosophy. And the math is easy. That's what you hire people for. You get a little understanding and then hire people. But the philosophy is not easy. So thank you for calling in with your story. Hi there, Joshua. My name is Catherine Hawley and I'm a CFP based in Monterey, California.

Thank you for all the knowledge and passion that you bring to the profession. I love how you've articulated creating a life that you don't want to retire from. And my husband enjoys all your shows related to prepping. And I hope that you speak at more financial planning conferences because I think other professionals would benefit greatly from your ideas.

Congratulations on 500 shows and keep up the good work. Ah, yes, the multivariate philosophy of financial preparedness. And I love bringing those things together because just basic preparedness, basic prepping, basic physical preparation is such an important bulwark against life. And that is fully integrated with comprehensive financial planning. There's no difference.

If anybody's looking for a good financial advisor, let me play her first name again. Good financial advisor in Monterey, California. I bet you you could find Ms. Catherine. Let me just cue that up. Let's hear her last name. Hi there, Joshua. My name is Catherine Hawley and I'm a CFP.

There you go. Catherine Hawley, CFP in Monterey, California. If you're looking for a good financial advisor. Hello, my name is Chukwuze Tere Okwurruji. People call me Chuzi. I'm 19 and I currently attend the State University of New York at Potsdam where I'm majoring in economics. So since I was about 17, I've been looking for ways to increase my financial literacy and your show has helped me do that exceedingly well.

For that, I am very grateful. There are not many shows out there like this one. So when I heard you would like people to call in and tell you what the show has helped them do, I thought, you know, I don't have too much money so I can't donate.

Being a college student, I actually have a negative net worth and your show has increased my financial literacy. For example, the rule of 72. I love things like that. Very simple, or at least on the outside simple. There's obviously very complicated things going on within the formula that you don't really see.

But the rule of 72, how you can just take an interest rate or a rate and divide it by 72 and it'll give you what that initial input will be at in one year. I love things like that. How you helped that 48 year old determine what he should do with his 25% of his net worth.

That whole concept of if you wouldn't do it again or do it as it is now or however you described it, then you should probably stop or pull out. I love little things like that. Things that are immediately applicable to me. I've only recently started investing in acorns. So obviously I'm not a certified investor or anything of that nature.

But I'm a firm believer in the fact that you don't have to make mistakes to learn. You can definitely learn from others' mistakes. Your show has just helped me learn to not make mistakes that I know I would have made had I not listened to your podcast. And I just wanted to let you know that I greatly value this show and I hope you stay on for a very long time.

That's all. Bye. Well, I'm not going anywhere. You win the coolest name of the day. I love it. What a fun name. Chukwuzitere Okwuaji. Very cool. Thank you for calling in. I really appreciate it. And yeah, I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up.

I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up.

I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up.

I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up.

I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up.

I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up.

I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up.

I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up.

I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up.

I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up.

I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up.

I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up.

I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up.

I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up.

I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up.

I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up.

I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up.

I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up.

I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up.

I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up.

I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up.

I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. I'm going to go ahead and wrap up. You've made it an hour and 42 minutes into this show.

I want to give you just a little business tip. Justin just mentioned there about the idea of a community magazine. The big next phase, in my opinion, the big next phase of media is going to be hyper-local. And it's being very, very poorly served at this point in time.

The great thing about going hyper-local is you have access to an audience that you can market to but you have broader exposure as well. So whether it's a community magazine, a community-focused podcast-- I can't remember which URL. I have a half a dozen URLs for a Palm Beach County business podcast.

I could build a standalone six-figure income off of a local business podcast and local business magazine. There are so many tools out there right now, and it is so easy if you focus on a geographic area to do it. So if you've been interested in doing something in your community, I would encourage you to do it.

And I may still do it myself here. We'll see. I've got other things ahead in the queue, and I've got to not chase after every great idea that I have. So I've disciplined myself to say no at this point in time. But for you, you might be able to do that and build it.

So community magazine--I don't know what he's doing with a community magazine, but there's an opportunity for specific niche groups. And the wonderful thing about working in a local geographic area, if you build a business, build a media platform or something in your local geographic area, is it could have multiple benefits.

Number one--and let me just give you a strategy. If I were going to do it today, I would build it on podcast interviews, which I would also simulcast onto the local radio stations. I would tightly edit them, make them very, very valuable, and I would distribute them online, and I would also use local radio to do it.

What are the benefits of it? Number one, you can build something valuable. And that's helpful to help people and serve people. If there were a specific locally focused media platform that were just geographically tight, I would listen to it for me. And for every one of you, I think there would be people as well, because you want to know who your neighbors are and what your neighbors are doing.

So if you built an interview show just going around your town and interviewing local business people in your town, you could build something really valuable there, and people would be interested because they're from your town. Now this will work better outside of New York City. I think this is better in a smaller town.

But people would be interested in that, hearing even probably stories from New York. There's probably someone doing that. But the big cities are already covered. I'm sure there's a--I don't know the name of it, but I would bet you $20 there's some kind of local public radio show that's serving New York City and Chicago and blah, blah, blah.

All these big cities are well served. But the little towns are not, and you can do it. Number two, what's the other benefit of it? It helps your network. You get to go around your town and meet every mover and shaker in your town, and you can build tremendous social equity and social capital by doing that, by finding out what's going on, and you can become a networker and an influencer in your local town.

That's powerful. It will give you power when it comes to local decisions, to air and bring attention to issues that are important, things that are being ignored. It's very, very powerful. And even financially, there's tremendous power financially because you can sell advertising in a local area. You can sell advertising a whole lot easier with a local program than you can with some big national or international program because the advertisers make much more sense.

So here's a little tip for you. I may still do it in the future, but if you're interested in building media, think local. That is the next -- that is the very valuable thing. It can work out financially and build equity in other ways as well, but think local.

That's the next phase of media in my analysis. This is Brandon from Charleston, South Carolina. August of 2014 is when I listened to my very first podcast. I'd been a big fan of Bumfuzzle for a while, and Joshua interviewed Pat Schulte. After that interview, I was pretty intrigued by this podcast and this new way to get information, and so I listened to a few episodes.

I thought it was pretty interesting and kind of forgot about it for a little while. A few weeks later, I was riding in the car, and just it kind of came back to me like, "Let me check this thing out again." So I turned it on and listened to a few more episodes, and that was the time when there were a lot of very in-depth financial planning shows, and I really enjoyed that information and that education that Joshua was providing.

I'm happy to say that I'm still an ardent listener. I listen to every episode as it's released. I'd say one of the best things that -- actions that I've taken from the podcast is just developing a balance sheet and a cash flow statement. It's just been such a great tool to use to follow our finances.

I also started a side business, a tax preparation business, based on an idea that I got from one of the interviews on the show, which was a great learning experience. The show and the community has helped me make a lot of decisions over the years, and I enjoy the community and the discussions that we have on Facebook and the intellectual conversations that help me to sharpen my discussions.

And so I'm glad that we've reached this 500-episode milestone and look forward to many more to come. Trevor Burrus: Thanks so much for calling in, Brandon. And just to speak personally to you, thank you. Thank you for your friendship, and thank you for all of your help. If I were to think of any listener that I've enjoyed more getting to know on -- because of radical personal finance, I couldn't -- I wouldn't put anybody ahead of you.

You're at the top of that list. I've enjoyed and appreciated our relationship and friendship more than just about anything else. I've enjoyed our conversations and interactions, and I hope that it continues for many years in the future. Alex Kessel: Hey there, Joshua. This is Alex. I just wanted to say thank you so much for all you do with radical personal finance.

I've been a longtime listener for years now. I've learned so much from your show, everything from tax planning to the intricacies of insurance, increasing my income, et cetera. And it has helped me. I was really inspired by when you talked a long time ago about Brian Tracy's 1,000% formula, and I've been doing my best to follow that to increase my income over the long term.

Some of your other advice, I've really put the use to like geographic arbitrage. So my family is actually now moving down to your state in Florida, so we'll be saving a ton of money in taxes just from that one move, aside from the opportunity itself that we're moving for.

So that's awesome. And also, another thing I appreciate about your show is the technical detail that you go into with all of your episodes. Not only are your ideas well-researched, but you present them in a very articulate manner, and I really appreciate that because I can go back and listen to your shows over and over again and really get the concepts well.

Another thing is I really appreciate your advice about podcasting because you've inspired me to start a podcast, partially, and so I'm going to be starting a podcast on investing called The Circle of Competence Investing Podcast, and I'm going to start publishing those episodes soon. I've recorded a few of those, and I've been using a lot of the advice that you've given on the show.

So thank you so much, and I'm looking forward to many more episodes from you. So thanks. Bye. I'm not going anywhere, and congratulations on starting your show. One thing that – by the way, I looked it up. It looks like it's not in the iTunes store, so it's not yet there.

One comment, and I meant to say this what Brandon said about the earlier deep dive financial planning shows that I did. I know many of you have wanted me to do more of those, and I have wanted to do more of those. I don't want to always stay superficial or I want to give practical reality, practical useful tips, and that comes from the world of financial planning.

The challenge that I faced was I didn't have the right format for it because with financial planning, I was just creating an audio interview. But I wasn't able to – well, I didn't have anything written behind it. And so I kind of felt like I was putting this huge amount of work into those shows but not able to capitalize on them the very best.

And let me be clear. The technical financial planning shows in terms of popularity of episodes have always been the least popular. It would be normal. I would produce a show on an interview or a show on something that was light or a philosophical concept or a discussion of something.

Those would be popular, popular, popular. And then I would publish – I used to do on Wednesdays a Wednesday financial planning show, and it would be kind of like, boom, dropped down 30% less. But the Wednesday financial planning shows, when I used to do them on Wednesdays, those would take the most time to prepare, to go very carefully through a topic and make sure that I cross my T's and dot my I's.

It was very time-consuming. And so from a simple productive capacity, I looked and I said, "Why would I do the things that take the most time to prepare and are the least popular, especially if I can't profit from them on the back end?" But my hope is in days to come.

I do want to produce more of them. But what I need to do is I need to produce them in the context where you can then follow up with buying something from me. And I think that if I do it that way, then it will be – make more sense.

So if I'm going to do an 82-part series – you know I would. If I'm going to do an 82-part series on retirement accounts, then it needs to be available so that you can have – so that whether I – how I do it, I'm not sure, whether I release the audio to you so it's freely available or part of it to you and then put transcripts and careful outlines and things like that.

I just wasn't – I didn't have a good plan to profit and capitalize off of it. So when I figure out how to do that and make sure that I can then have a product that you can buy where it becomes financially worth it for me to put in the massive amount of time, then I'll do that.

And I'm willing to do that and I want to do it because those shows are valuable and it's just that I was 80 percent of the way there and another 20 percent of work and then I would have something created that I could sell. But I didn't have that plan worked out.

I didn't have the technology fixed, etc. So both Brandon and Alex mentioned about that technical detail. That's why I've kind of walked away from it, but I haven't walked away from it forever. Don't worry. I'll do an 82-part series at some point in the future. ZACHARY RISKIN: Hi, Joshua.

This is Zach from Traverse City, Michigan. I'm a regular listener to Radical Personal Finance. I really enjoy the shows that talk about why we work in thinking about retirement in context. The idea of what kind of work would we do if we were never able to retire I think is a fascinating question.

Thanks for the shows. My only request is I wish the shows were a little bit shorter. 30 minutes to me is great. Once you get over an hour, it's hard to find the time to listen to all the podcasts I want to listen to. Thanks again. Bye-bye. JUSTIN BALDONI: Yeah, absolutely, Zach.

It's a great request and very, very reasonable. I'll just respond to it by saying I hear you loud and clear. I want shows to be tight. I want them to be shorter. However, as a content creator, let me explain. The old quip I think it was usually attributed to Churchill, if I'd had more time, I would have written a shorter letter.

The shorter the show, the more time it takes to create, and that's one of the biggest challenges when you give things away for free. I could probably go through my shows and edit out I would guess 15% to 20% of the show and create a better product that would be tighter.

I've tried over time to focus on getting better in my delivery. I've never edited a show. I've always just focused on saying how can I tighten up and make sure that my communication skill is better. I've gotten much better over the last 500 episodes, a lot of room to go, but I've gotten a lot better.

But the key is always – the question is always, OK, in terms of the model, what's the monetization model? If you create a very tightly produced show, that can be very valuable if you can make it up off of advertising or if you can make it up off of these other things.

So I'm fully aware of making sure that shows are short. I've tried to tighten them up, and I will continue to do that because no one wants to have their time wasted. But there is also just that whole – there's just a balance. As a creator, you just say, "Well, I can do this, and I'm going to release it at an hour and get 80% of the results that I would if I tighten it up and put another 10 hours in," just like I was talking about with the previous thing about financial planning conversation.

We always have to judge the worth of what we're doing and ask the question, "Is this the best use of my time right now?" None of us have huge amounts of time. We all have the same amount of time, and it's all a matter of allocation. How do we allocate that time?

And I've made different choices thus far. But in the future, we'll see. Trevor Burrus: Hi, Joshua. Congratulations on 500 episodes. For me, some of the biggest takeaway from your show have been your radical thinking processes about so many things has really challenged the way I was brought up and the way I looked at the world.

And that's been really neat to see things through someone else's eyes and think about things in ways that I've never thought of things before. From a financial point, the cash flow statement you taught in one of the earlier episodes has really helped me be more efficient with my family's finances.

We have been tracking our expenses for years through a budget, and I was always looking at what I brought home, subtracting our monthly expenses, and trying to move the difference to some sort of emergency fund or investment, and then was frustrated when our checking balance was low. And using the cash flow statement, I saw the problem was with our credit cards, we were paying the money in the following month after the expenses.

And with the cash flow statement, I was able to see when that money was actually going out, and I'm able to save more efficiently and invest more efficiently without the checking balance dropping low. And then also getting my kids involved, I really liked your honey bear example with your son selling honey bear bottles to people who are visiting the home.

So this weekend, our town had our big festival and parade, and it was a warm day. And so I talked to my eight-year-old who for $2.25 bought a case of water, sold them for $1 apiece, and made $24. So that was really cool to watch him do all the work and do the selling and be excited about the return and be able to give away a significant chunk to our church's mission trips and also keep a significant chunk for himself.

So that was really neat. Thank you for all of your work and excited to hear the next 500 episodes. I love that. What a great story. You beat me to the water bottle idea, giving you the idea, but my son hasn't quite been ready for it. An eight-year-old, though, was perfect, and that is awesome.

Definitely, I'm going to do more in the future on kids and money. I have been kind of quietly practicing my own ideas that are uniquely mine with my own children, interacting with them and seeing how it works. And, of course, my eldest is four, so I want to make sure that I have good practical experience.

But I want to do a bunch more on that because we've got so many opportunities and there's no reason whatsoever why our children need to be broke. There's no reason why our children can't be financially independent from a very early age. And I mean by their late teens. This whole kind of – I just recently preached on – I forget the exact topic.

I was preaching about money in my local church, and I was just kind of tracing it through. And the entire kind of standard American profile is basically an entryway to a lifetime of slavery, of financial slavery. And it's so stupid. It's an absurd model that doesn't work. And yet we're so culturally ingrained into it.

And there's no reason for it. Anybody who wants to could just stand up and say, "Well, this is stupid," and walk away. And so I want to share with you in the days to come what I think is so stupid and how to do it better. But I also want to make sure that I'm not just simply speaking out of a youthful naivete.

And I want to make sure that I am speaking from experience and that my commentary is helpful. But I love hearing that story. And definitely when it comes to children giving money, saving money, spending money, I think it's almost meaningless if they're spending mom and dad's money. Saving mom and dad's money, giving mom and dad's money.

But it's very meaningful when they take their profits and their wages and give them away. If it's a mission drive in your local church or give them away to somebody who's in need or invest them when it's their money, then it's deeply meaningful. So I love that story. Last one here from Shakira.

Hi, Joshua. I'm Shakira, and I wanted to kind of give you an overview of who I am and let you know what I've gained from listening to Radical Personal Finance. So two years ago, I came to Melbourne, Australia from Atlanta, Georgia, to study my master's. I studied at the University of Melbourne, which is the top university here in Australia.

And I was extremely excited when I was accepted and didn't think about the money. Money is actually something that me and my family did not really discuss. My mom is fairly poor and my dad is as well. And we just really never talked about it. I'm actually also a first generation college graduate in my family, in my immediate family.

So I about a year ago, I became extremely interested in finance because of all of the student loan debt. I actually accumulated one hundred thirty thousand dollars of student loan debt. And that's including the interest because I've actually not been making any payments on it. I just graduated in December and I'm still in my grace period.

But this is about to be up and I and the reality is setting in that I have to pay these loans back. But but so a year ago, I started listening to your show and it really opened up my eyes to a lot of things that I had no clue about.

I never knew what a Roth IRA was. I never knew that there was a retirement fund of 401k. I heard of it. I heard people saying it, but I didn't know what it was. So I was completely financially illiterate. And that has turned around immensely. Thanks to you. I've tried other shows like Her Money by Gene Chatsky.

I've tried Money Girl and Motley Fool. I'm just other shows, but I found that your approach was the best for me and it kind of gave me a solid foundation, has given me a solid foundation and is which I'm still building on after only learning about the basics of money over the last year through listening to Radical Personal Finance.

But since I've listened to your show, I've set up a budget and I'm really a bit struggling with my budget still. I know that it's something that you continuously tweak. But yeah, the budget has hasn't been set up for very long because after graduating in December, I just started working full time.

Before that, I was working casually and part time at different places just to try and get through university. But now, now for the last few months, I've been working full time in earning fifty four thousand dollars a year, which actually isn't a lot, but I thought it was all right for my first job.

And I'm still looking. I'm only on a year long contract. So in October, that'll be done. But I'm looking for more work that will pay me more. My expenses are pretty low, though. So that was something else that I've learned from your show is to cut my expenses, make sure that my expenses are a lot lower than my income.

And I'm still able now to save about fifteen hundred dollars a month, even though I'm making about four thousand dollars a month. So that's about twenty five percent or a little bit more or actually more than twenty five percent of my income. I'm saving and I don't have a car.

Melbourne, Australia, is actually very expensive to live in. So I don't know how long I'll be here. But I've also spoken to a financial advisor. And this person was more of a retirement specialist, but was able to answer some some questions that I had as well. And I don't think I would have ever even thought to speak to a financial advisor if I didn't listen to Radical Personal Finance.

I'm also just figuring out what's important to me, you know, prioritizing my life and my the relationships that I have with my friends and people, my family, maintaining those and realizing that money is not everything. I think that you have made several shows where you express this and express the importance of other aspects of life other than the finance, financial, the financial aspect.

I also have a credit card, which can be scary because I am in a lot of debt, but I'm and I'm not going into debt with that. I'm actually very responsible with my credit card. I pay it all off and try and reap the benefits of using the bank's money.

So. These are the ways that I have grown in and learned a lot through listening to your show, and I can honestly say that I am the minority. I listened to your demographics podcast and realized that, wow, like I am one of the few people who are listening to this who are like me.

I'm African-American, come from a poor background, completely financially illiterate. Before I listen to personal radical personal finance, I do believe that through listening to your show and seeking financial advice and help that I will be able to make it further in life. And this is why I mean, I listen to it and I was getting curious about money when I started to wonder and started to pay my own bills and my own taking care of myself, I guess.

I just started to realize that, oh, one day I want to buy a house. But how the heck am I going to do that? And I don't even know even the first step to doing that. So I think that after listening to you, a lot of my questions have become a lot clearer.

So I know that other people who are like me probably haven't reached out to you as much, but I would just like to say thank you so much for putting in all of this work. Congratulations on reaching 500 podcasts. You are an amazing accomplishment. And I would say keep it up, because although you may not hear from the people who are like me, there are others out there.

And you're really helping, even if you're only helping one thousand of us. That's a huge difference. And I think that more people will be reached and you are reaching the minority that you were hoping to reach. Have a good one. Thanks, Joshua. Sometimes it's hard to know what to say.

Shakira, thank you for calling in and for sharing that story with me. I saved the best for last, just because I thought Shakira's story was so encouraging. And I fear that perhaps I oversaid things in the past or I said all my listening audiences are a bunch of extremely highly educated, rich white older men.

Because I know that's not. And anyway, it doesn't matter what I said or didn't say. Just that it was very encouraging, Shakira, to hear your story. Because it does. It was a dream that I set out to do. I just got tired of people not – I don't even know what to say.

It is very encouraging for me to hear your story, as you say, when you – a young black woman from an urban environment with poor parents, first in your family to go to college. And then coming out to a place where you're learning these basics. And if I have ever been cavalier and not done a good job of presenting the basics, I'm sorry for that.

I'm going to do more in the future. Because your voicemail was just very inspiring to me to say, "No, there are people listening." And I don't know if there are a thousand people like you who are just learning and just starting or if there are – it doesn't matter to me.

I do it for one. So it means the world to me that you made the time to share your story with me. And by the way, I want to applaud you. Your savings rate, if you're saving $1,500 a month on a $4,000 income, is 38%. And that is tremendous.

Now, you got a big old pile of debt. But I know that with what you described, you can go forward and you can clear that out in coming days. And so I'm excited about your future. And so Shakira and everyone else who called me in and every one of you who is hearing me in your earbuds right now or earpods or whatever, on your car radio, in your ears, I'm here to serve.

And I'm here. I want to work with you. And I want to serve you because I'm a big believer in freedom. And we have and enjoy so much freedom of opportunity. And I'm a big believer in equality, equality of opportunity. And the reality is that we all have differing options that are available to us.

And we don't get to decide those things. We don't get to decide what advantages or disadvantages we have. We don't get to decide what opportunities we have or don't have. We don't get to decide a lot of things. But we do get to decide is what are we going to do with what we have.

It's interesting. There's a phrase that angers me deeply and I'll probably do a show on it in the future. But there's a phrase that is very common in our current social debate. It's called "Check your privilege." And I guess this is a big thing now. Not I guess. This is a big thing now where you're supposed to check your privilege.

And one of the things that bugs me so much about this phrase and this approach is that there's become this modern ethos that you should feel bad for doing well. And I just think that's absurd. What I do think is you should acknowledge the fact that you've been privileged.

Acknowledge the fact that you've been blessed. And look to say what do I do with it. And that's where this whole debate goes off the rails. I have been more blessed and more privileged than almost anyone that I know. I can't think of somebody that I would ever trade places with in terms of my own childhood and my own background.

I can't think of a single person. And there are elements of race in that. Certainly I'm white. It gives me all kinds of benefits and advantages. I'm a male. It gives me all kinds of benefits and advantages. Of course it does. But my privilege goes far beyond those things.

I was raised by parents who loved me and who poured their life out for me. You want to know what kind of a big benefit that makes in your life? It's huge. The data, the sociological research is everywhere. I was raised by parents that love one another. Never in my life have I ever seen my parents fight and argue with one another.

Not a single time. I've never seen my parents fight and argue with one another. My dad said they had one fight. It was like 40 years ago. And he wasn't joking. Not a single time. A stable home environment. Raised in a stable house. I went to good schools. I had parents that poured into me the value of education and the value of studying.

I was blessed with tremendous mental acuity. I have a high degree of intelligence. I'm very good at reading and learning and certain things come naturally to me. And I'm blessed that these are the skills that are helpful in our society. I was born in 1985. I was born at the perfect time in human history.

Where by the time I started paying attention, it's been nothing but good my entire life. And the opportunities that I have in 2017 are like nothing that has ever been available to any person 20 years ago. I can live better today than the richest person in the world could have lived 40 years ago.

I've been so blessed. And I am deeply, deeply privileged. But you know what? Here's the problem. So are you. Because I could come into your life and I could start getting to know you and I could find a whole long list of things that you do better than other people.

I could find a whole long list of privileges that you have that I don't have. I could find a whole long list of ways that you are superior to me. Circumstances that you've been involved in, physical attributes and characteristics that you have, skills and abilities that I envy. A whole long list.

So what do you do? What you do is you recognize the fact that you are deeply privileged and that you are deeply blessed. And then you say, "How do I use this to serve others?" As always, I didn't intend to preach, but I'm going to preach for just a moment here as I close today's show.

There are a couple of very important statements by Jesus that I think form the foundation of everything, the way that I approach life. Number one, Jesus said, "He who would be greatest among you must be the servant of all." And people often get this mixed up. They think that the way to be great is to go and beat other people up.

They think that the way to be great is to go and talk about how great they are. They think the way to be great is to go and get a gun and tell everyone, "You've got to say that I'm great." That's not the case. If you want to be great, humble yourself and become a servant of others.

You'll be great. The other thing that's so important is this, "To whom much is given, much is required." You don't get to sit around and just say, "Well, I've got all this great stuff, and so I'm going to do nothing with it." No. "To whom much is given, much is required." That should strike fear into your heart because when you look at your privilege, the question you need to ask yourself is, "What am I doing with my privilege?

What am I doing with what I've been given?" One of the things that I cannot stand is that in our modern public discussion, we want to take people to task for what they have or what they don't have. Many of us have little control over what we have and what we don't have.

You shouldn't judge somebody based upon what they have or what they don't have. The judgment comes based upon what you do with what you have. The parable of the talents in the Bible, the master gives one of his servants one talent, another talent, another servant five talents, another servant ten talents.

He comes back, goes away on a long journey, comes back, and asks for an accounting. The master comes to the servants. Let me find it here and read it. I'll read the version from Matthew 25 from the New Testament. Jesus is preaching and he says this, "For it will be like a man going on a journey who called his servants and entrusted to them his property.

To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one." In case you're curious, there are two versions of it. In one version of this parable, it's recorded in the Bible, it's one talent, five talents, and ten. In this one, it's five, two, and one. "To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability." Notice that, "to each according to his ability." "Then he went away.

He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them, and he made five talents more. So also he who had the two talents made two talents more. But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master's money.

Now after a long time, the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them. And he who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five talents more, saying, 'Master, you delivered to me five talents. Here I have made five talents more.' His master said to him, 'Well done, good and faithful servant.

You have been faithful over a little. I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.' And he also who had the two talents came forward, saying, 'Master, you delivered to me two talents. Here I have made two talents more.' His master said to him, 'Well done, good and faithful servant.

You have been faithful over a little. I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.' He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, 'Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow and gathering where you scattered no seed.

So I was afraid and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here you have what is yours.' But his master answered him, 'You wicked and slothful servant, you knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest.

So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness.

In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'" I can think of no better way to articulate the importance of being productive with what we've been given. None of us can control what we were given. In the book of Corinthians, Paul says, "What do you have that you did not receive?

If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?" None of us have any control over what we have received or have not received. But we do have control over what we do with our talents. The actual word "talent," interestingly enough, the origin of the word "talent" is traced directly to that parable in Matthew 25.

Prior to the whole idea that we have of the understanding of a talent, because when the biblical text was written, a talent just simply meant it was a unit of monetary value. It was a specific value sum of money. But we, of course, understand it to be more than money today, and that understanding that we have, talent meaning that unique skill and innate ability, that idea of talent as innate ability is traced directly to that parable.

Because none of us control what we were given. So it's important that we not despise people for the talents that they have. That's what we so often do in our modern culture. We tear people down. We tear people who are rich down and say, "Well, you're rich, and I've got to indulge my greed and my jealousy, and I've got to take from you.

I've got to get what's mine. I've got to get it from you." Or, "You're well-spoken, and I've got to take from you and take that away." Or, "You're beautiful, and I've got to knock you down a peg." Or, "You're strong and athletic, and I've got to somehow make you feel bad for that." It's the most greedy, disgusting culture that just looks to take, take, take from other people.

The better – I think my dogs like what I had to say. In case you don't know, I have faithful co-workers who have listened to all 500 episodes of Radical Personal Finance. My two little doggies that are always on the ground at my feet when I record these shows.

It's just a greedy, disgusting culture that just looks to knock people down a peg. You don't make something good by taking somebody – you don't make something better by taking from people who do good and trying to knock them down. What you do is you use what you have and use it to lift others up.

That's what I seek to do, albeit imperfectly, I seek to do it. Here on the show, I want to lift others up. And so, for Shakira, who's a young woman, black woman from an urban environment, raised with poor parents, first in her family to go to college, it's my job to do everything I can to help her to have every possible advantage that I can convey to her.

And then it's her job to go and do the same. So as we close out episode 500, thank you for indulging my sermon. But as we close this out, I want to leave you with a charge. If you just want to listen, listen, listen to Radical Personal Finance, please don't.

Don't just listen, listen, listen. Listen, rather, so that you can do in your own life. And as you start to be more established, start to understand the basics of a financial term, as you start to earn money and save money and learn how to live on less than you make, as you start to be established, then go out and serve someone else.

Go out and teach someone else. Go out and help someone else. Please. However you do that, that's not up to me and I don't care. That's up to you. You may have a talent of going next door to your next door neighbor and seeking to help them and sit down at their kitchen table.

There are millions of people all throughout this world who are struggling with budgeting. And guess what? They can't learn it on a podcast. I can't help somebody with their budget on a podcast with a specific thing that they're struggling with, but you can. Go and get involved in their life and sit down at their kitchen table and get out a calculator and do everything you can and help them understand their budget.

And then follow up with them because, Shakira, you talked about struggling with budgeting. Guess what? It takes a long time to be good at it. So go back the next week and the next month and help them. I can't do it all and you can't do it all, but together, we make a tremendous difference.

That's what I want to accomplish. You know, I just got back from FinCon and I've never said this on the show, but one of my secret ambitions has always been to be someone who could cross that chasm and help educate people from my experience as a professional financial advisor, but to kind of help the financial blogger, to help someone else to articulate it in a different tone of voice.

My stuff is not for everyone, nor do I want it to be. If I were trying to make something for everyone, then that would be an abdication of my unique skill, my unique talent. But I want you to take, you know, I want you to take what I have to share with you and go and share it with someone else.

As we close, there's a poem I've quoted on here before. Just a second, let me find it. It's by a friend of mine. His name is Jonathan Walton and I first heard him do it probably a decade ago, but in many ways, there's just a line in this poem, and I'll play the whole thing for you, but there's a line in this poem that for me is so meaningful, but his line says this.

"We are people pebbles tossed into a pool. Every ripple I create in turn ripples you. So in unison, we are rippling. A type of ripple rhythm, we are rippling. A type of ripple rhythm, but we need to ripple in a way that benefits our living." So I think I'll shut up and I'll let my friend Jonathan Walton take us out with this poem that he wrote many years ago after a motorcycle accident.

My name is Jonathan Walton, and if you remember nothing about who I am, that I'm from Broadnax, Virginia is not important. That I go to Columbia University is not important. That I've written three books, it is not important. Accomplishments are accolades that we take upon ourselves separating each other, but these things are just things that I've done.

They would not be true if it wasn't for the truth that I know that is true for me and the truth that I know that is true for you, that we are beautifully, fearfully, and wonderfully made with gifts that no one else has. Think people that no one else can touch.

Every single one of us, special and unique, with changes for the better that we can make in this world. I didn't always know this. I didn't always act this way, and all of us have these moments where our lives change, where our lives are redefined every single day. For you, it may have been a near-death experience.

For you, it may have been a conversation you had with someone. For you, it may have been a sermon. For you, it may have been a job, but for me, it was on a motorcycle. So I find myself standing there, gazing at the space, no focus, just blank, no expression on my face, no sound proceeded out of my mouth because words could not describe my experience.

So I took a pen and I wrote them down because I lost control only 16 years old. Instead of the brake, the gas I did hold. I was propelled through the air onto new ground, moving without direction until by grace I was found. God steadied my path, breathed air into my gas, but gave me another chance when it looked like my last because I flew through the air onto Harley Davidson, over and in Bankman and through Parking Spaces to the left.

I leaned and then to the right, then I careened to a stop as if at a red light. See, I should have been lying there, lifeless on the pavement, the subject of police statements, my face plastered on front pages of newspapers. But instead, I was spared. "It's not your time, God," saying that for me to walk without care, be like exclaiming, "He wasn't there." Because I put fear in the ones most dear to me, but it also put a new fear in me, not the fear of the motorcycle because that is not the lesson.

The lesson is that of all things, we must be respectful. On this globe, we have few moments, and in one moment, all of our moments can be stolen, so I must cherish these moments as if they are something golden, but more than gold, because you cannot compare life to stone.

That would be like saying clothes are worth more than bones. Hair is worth less than a comb. The kite is more significant than the wind that blows it. Glasses are more important than sight. The cause is less important than the fight. The ability to speak is more important than a deaf person being able to sign.

I am alive. I must view life from a different perspective, look into my reflection and begin inspection. Respect the blessings that I have been given. Be thankful for my beard, but be more thankful to have risen. This lesson I have learned, and now I must teach. It is my duty to tell everyone in this world that I see, don't be concerned about the price of your shoes, because if you look down, you walk on two feet.

Don't worry if you eat hot dogs or the finest beef, because on our place before us, we all have something to eat. We all have something worth more than all of Wall Street. It cannot be bought with all this world's currency or possession. Greater than any wealth on this planet, or for stronger than any boulder pure granite.

Each and every single one of us has life, an aspect of being that is not fully understood, but living is something that we all must do. We are all people, pebbles tossed into a pool. Every ripple I create, internal ripple you, so in unison we ripple in a type of ripple rhythm, but we need to ripple in a way that benefits our living.

I'll do it again. We are all people, pebbles tossed into a pool. Every ripple I create, internal ripple you, so in unison we ripple in a type of ripple rhythm, but we need to ripple in a way that benefits our living. Actions that hinder our growth are unneeded, so we learn from our actions, they help us in succeeding.

Mistakes are necessary, but all of our repeats are not. If a ripple that we make is wrong, we should make the ripple stop. So what will we do with our lives after God has opened our eyes? Will we turn our backs and hide from the light, or bathe in its radiance with an enlightened mind?

And for me, that was that moment, by grace. For me, that was that moment, November 2, 2008. I was in 2002 on a motorcycle outside of an Arby's restaurant. I thought I was cool. I wanted to make money to buy things. I wanted to make money to make my truck nicer, to make my rims bigger, to make my system louder.

I wanted to do that. That was me. Subconsciously, these things that I was working towards, these things that I was trying to please, these people that I was trying to make happy, and it all came to a stop in a parking lot in southern Virginia, South Hill, where I'm from.

I got on a fat boy, 1,400-pound Harley-Davidson motorcycle. I put my left foot on, put my right foot on, put my hands on the handlebars, and somebody decided to rev the engine while I was sitting on it. The bike decided to take off, and when it took off, it hit the curb and it went into the air.

And when it went into the air, I came off of their bike, and they said it looked like somebody grabbed us and put us back together. The bike hit the ground, the rear brakes went out, and the bike accelerated towards a concrete wall. This is the middle of a small town.

Walmart is the biggest thing in a southern town, and that's where we were. Saturday morning, 10 a.m., at a Walmart. Busiest place in a town, and I did not get hit by a car. Nobody ran into me. There was no collision. I just went up into the air, came off of the bike.

Someone grabbed us, put us back together, put us on the ground. I accelerated towards a concrete wall, and 50 feet from that wall, the bike stopped. It stopped. And a week later, I scored two touchdowns in a football game the next week. I wasn't hurt, but I was changed.

And it's not a near-death experience that something has to happen to you for you to take stock, to realize that every single day that we have is a gift. But it made me stop and think. And a year later, my first book came out, because that is what happened to me.

I realized that every single day is a gift, and I said, "Okay, this is a gift that I have." But all of a sudden, I said, "What about all those other gifts and other people?" My gift--poetry, being able to speak, to write, to act, to sing. But all these other people working in unison.

When I say we are all people, pebbles tossed into a pool, we are people, and we're tossed into the world. But what would it look like if we all used all of our gifts together? What would it look like for me to be a poet? What would it look like for you to be a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher, a stockbroker?

What would that look like? What would it look like to have janitors and restaurant workers and health care providers that were working all for each other? What would it look like? What would it look like for people who love theater to perform? What would it look like for people who love to sing to teach?

What would it look like? I can only say, "What if?" What if all of the gifts that we had, that all of us were blessed with, because they are there, it's a reality that every single one of us was beautifully, fearfully, wonderfully made with gifts that no one else on this planet has.

No body else can touch the people that we can touch. I can't say to your mother it's going to be all right. I can't say to your father it's going to be okay. I can't say to your children that I'm going to be there for them in that way.

But you can, if you choose to. We're all, every single day that we get up, standing on the edge of something great, standing on the beginnings of something new, standing on the threshold of who we want to be. Thank you all for listening to the past 500 episodes of Radical Personal Finance.

I'll be back with you very soon. This show is part of the Radical Life Media Network of podcasts and resources. Find out more at RadicalLifeMedia.com. Struggling with your electric bill? Get an energy assist from SDG&E and save. You may qualify for an 18% discount. Visit SDGE.com/FERA to find out more.