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And the answer is elegantly simple. If you would like to be given more free stuff by others, then you should become known as someone who is a good receiver of free things. You need to become known as someone who can be given things, develop a reputation as somebody who values the things that others might give you.

You say Joshua what difference does that make? It makes all the difference in the world. What I've learned is if you will develop a reputation as somebody who appreciates the good gifts that others give you, then people with good gifts to give will enjoy giving them to you. I didn't always feel this way.

When I was younger I had a significant self-image problem. I lacked confidence in who I was and in the type of person that I was. I always wanted to appear to be rich. I was the kind of person who wanted to not look like I was in need. And so I would have been the kind of person who would have not wanted to receive things for free.

I was reminded of this a year or two ago in some personal interaction with somebody that I know. And this person is very broke constantly. Throughout this person's entire lifetime they have always been broke. They are very poor at managing money. And when I say broke I mean seriously, seriously broke.

Always. And what was interesting is I watched this person on multiple occasions over the course of a few weeks be offered gifts by other people that to me seemed like great gifts. Much of it was food and this person didn't have money for food, but yet they were offered gifts by other people.

But because this person has so much pride about their money, and hint, hint, broke people are usually the most sensitive and proud about their money. Because this person has so much pride about their money I watched them systematically turn down these good gifts, these offers of good food and good things.

I myself have tried to give this person good things and basically I've given up because I've realized they just aren't going to be a good receiver of things. On some of those occasions when I observed somebody offering this person good gifts of food, and I'm not talking about food that they pulled from a dumpster, good quality food that was being given away for free, I myself opened my mouth and said, "Well, I'll take it." Now what's funny is I have about a bazillion times more money than this broke person has.

Yes, bazillion is a technical financial planning term that means lots, about a bazillion times more money. And yet here I am going ahead and taking the free things that they were being offered. But I've learned that if you'll develop a reputation as being somebody who is a good receiver of gifts and who appreciates it, then people will give you lots of stuff.

And it'll be good stuff too, that's a real blessing to you. I'm not going to turn down free food when somebody wants to give me free food. What a blessing. What a blessing to my family, what a blessing to my budget. It allows me to save money, money may be used to grow my wealth, that it gives me the opportunity to bless someone else, gives me the opportunity to invite someone in for a good meal with food that I didn't have to pay for.

What a blessing. And yet I've watched again and again as this broke person gets offered fewer and fewer good things because they're not a good receiver of things. I think most of us want to see the things that we have and that we're done with go to a good home.

That's why when we're done with certain clothes or certain items and possessions that are no longer useful for us, most of us would prefer to take them down to a thrift store and make a donation to the local charity store rather than to toss them in the garbage. And I think that's proper.

If we had the opportunity to give away food, for example, that was perfectly edible, most of us would rather see that food go to good use instead of it being poured down the garbage. Now whether that good use is to go into your dog's stomach or whether it's to go into your neighbor's stomach, that would depend, of course, on the quality of the food.

But we want to maintain and to care for the things that we have. We have so much. We've been blessed with so much. And so it's important for us to use that and to make good use of it. But pride gets in the way for many people. Pride makes many broke people too proud to admit they're broke.

It's amazing that it does seem to me that there is more pride related to money and financial topics among people who have no intelligent basis for pride, meaning poor people, than there is even among the wealthy. I couldn't cite any data to that. That's just been my own experience.

Now maybe that makes sense or maybe it doesn't. We'll save that for another time. But I've observed that if you're poor and you're too proud to receive things from others, people will stop offering them to you and you'll probably never be anything but poor. I've also observed this too, of course, for people who either are rich or want to pretend to be rich, that they're often too proud to take things.

What happens is you develop this reputation as not being a good receiver. I recommend that you flip that around or at least if you want to get more free stuff. Be a good receiver of gifts. Be somebody who knows how to take something and use it and recycle it and reuse it.

If you do, you'll find hundreds of dollars of value flowing into your life without you having to work for it. Here are some simple examples. This one used to really bug me because I had family members who would do it and I just hated that reputation. I was lacking self-confidence.

I didn't want to appear poor, etc. I used to have family members who if they were a big party and of course many times a host will prepare a lot of food for a party or they'll order a lot of food in for catering. Frequently when the host of a party has done that, the host is sick of the food or they just want everything cleaned up.

They've done so much work to host a big party and there's so much food left over or perhaps they're a small family, they can't use it. They would love for somebody to take it off their hands. Of course, many people don't want to use leftovers. I've never understood this anti-leftover discrimination.

Some people have this deep, deep discrimination against leftovers. But whatever. So they don't offer it to everybody. But there have been so many times where I've watched family members and friends and I've done it myself where you're at the end of a party and someone says, "Does anybody want the food?" You say, "I'll take it, sure." You may have 50, 100 dollars worth of food.

And it's great food, very expensive food, very finely prepared, catered food, etc. And that may feed your family for a couple of weeks. Hundreds of dollars worth of value. You run the tax savings on that. You figure out how much you would have had to earn with all of your expenses, work expenses, and now all of a sudden it becomes very, very valuable.

Or possessions, things that people are giving away. Many people have this built-in concern about not wanting to give away used items. There's this ethos in the US American culture that says that you should only give new things. Now, there's a time and a place for it. Of course, there are some things that are best given new.

There are things that I would give used and there are things that I would not give used. Same for you. But there are people to whom I would never give used and there are people to whom I would happily give used. But I've got a whole lot more used things to give away than I have new things.

And so whether it's being a happy recipient of toys that are passed along from another family or a bicycle that's passed along or clothing that's being passed along, if you'll just simply say yes when someone says, "Are you interested?" You'll develop a reputation as somebody who appreciates being given things and then people will look to give you more and more things and they'll always think of you first.

Or at least that's been our experience. My wife and I have been so blessed over the years of people just giving us hundreds and hundreds of dollars worth of valuable items that have been so helpful to us. We've been given furniture for free. We've been given cookware for free.

We've been given clothing for ourselves and for our children for free. With three children, we've hardly purchased more than 50 bucks maybe, 50 to $100 worth of clothing for our own children. And those were, as I specifically remember the outfits, those were some fancy outfits that my wife really wanted for the children.

They weren't needed. They weren't necessary. What a blessing that's been for us as a young family with young children, not having to pay hundreds and hundreds of dollars worth of clothing. Now when the clothing comes, frequently it comes in a big bag and you got to go through and sort it.

Frequently it comes stained or dirty and you've got to go through and clean it. But I couldn't even calculate the value of that. With the exception of a few basic birthday presents here and there, my wife and I have never purchased toys for our children. We live in a sea of toys that are constantly floating through our house.

Now part of that comes from knowing other people with children who – their children are done with the toys and they're ready to pass them along. Part of it comes because my wife is the world's greatest trash picker. My children think that all the world's best toys come from trash piles.

There is so much. We live in a lower class neighborhood and there's so – people in lower class neighborhoods throw everything away. Brand new stuff thrown away all the time. I'll do a show separately on that in the future about what we've learned living in a lower class neighborhood.

But one thing we've learned is that poor people throw everything away. So brand new stuff, tags on it and my wife is amazing. She's an amazing trash picker. I cheat trying to get her to set up an Instagram account or a blog or something of the stuff that she finds.

But I – she doesn't want to do it. But we're talking hundreds of dollars in a year of stuff that she finds. I want to be not overly hyperbolic in my language but I mean this week she found a Kindle. She finds blankets. She finds animals. So our kids think all the greatest toys come off of trash piles.

We bring them home, clean them up, make sure if it's anything that could carry germs that's disinfected and save in working order and all that. But it leads to such utter and embarrassing abundance for our children. They have this constant stream of stuff flowing in and then when we're done, we clean it up and we pass it along somewhere else.

I don't mean to go into trash picking but part of it is just having the reputation of somebody who's not going to turn up their nose. Remember that friend that I was talking about earlier? In the past, I've given that person things. Sometimes I've given that person used items.

Sometimes I've actually bought new things knowing that this person is in need, knowing that they probably are the kind of person who would very much turn up their nose if I give them something used because of course that's beneath them. Knowing that, I've purchased new things. You know what I found?

They were just as bad of a receiver of new things as they were used things. It was amazing, really amazing to see. I couldn't believe it, how somebody with so little could be so proud that even the new things, they didn't say no, but even the new things couldn't be accepted with simple gratitude.

Friend, you don't want that reputation because it's destructive to your soul and it's bad on your pocketbook because you've got to buy everything for yourself. Now obviously my friend who's very broke and very poor has no need. If they have no need, why would I give them anything? So I don't give them things anymore.

But you know what? I'm happy to take the wonderful things that I'm given. Here's my challenge to you. The next time somebody says, "Would you like such and such?" Just train yourself to say, "Yes, absolutely." Now you may need to follow it on with a couple of clarifying things.

Here would be some recommendation to you. One, you may need to say, "If I can't use it, I'll find somebody else that can use it." Because when you're given a lot of things, you can't keep everything. There's no room in my house to store all of the wonderful things that we're given.

So what we do is we go through and we take the things that are good for us, then we pass them along to others. And then that way, in the same way that we are blessed by others, we can pass that blessing along to others. And this makes a real difference because for every poor person who is too proud to say yes to a good gift, my guess is there are a dozen that are not and that who will genuinely appreciate the good things that are given.

Now you may have to go outside of your circle of influence. You may have to go outside your current sphere of friends. But there are some people around you who would really appreciate those nice things if you can get them into the proper hand. One of the challenges of recycling is getting the good stuff into the right person's hand.

But you can do it. And sometimes it'll take a little bit of time, but it's really worth it. You know, half the things that my wife finds on the trash piles, well, she'll come home with bags of clothes. This week she came home with bags of clothes. Somebody was moving, they obviously couldn't move with them.

Go ahead and wash them and we pass them along to go through. Maybe there's something in it for us. Maybe there's something in it for someone that we know. But then we just pass them along and we package them up and send them to Haiti. I'd a whole lot rather see a bag of clothes get washed and cleaned and sent down to Haiti where they can do some good versus tossed in a garbage heap in South Florida.

What a waste. So perhaps you can be the one who can just pick through something and pass it along. Now you do need to be careful, of course. There are problems. You know, my grandfather was a farmer and he had about a 30-acre junkyard with all of the stuff.

Now in those days, that was important. You had to do that. You had to keep all your old tractors and all your old stuff around for parts so that you could go and scavenge. And my grandfather, people would come from miles around to use his junkyard. I don't have 30 acres to dedicate to a junkyard.

So I've got to be careful that we don't hoard things. And you should not hoard. You shouldn't just pile everything up and let it accumulate until your house looks like something that ought to be on a TV show dedicated to hoarding. Be careful, of course, with your time. You don't always have time to go through everything and to fix everything up and to do that.

But frankly, those risks are very, very low. So here is my recommendation. Next time somebody says, "Would you like such and such?" Just say yes. And if you'll say yes, you'll start to develop that reputation as somebody who really appreciates the good things that you're given, whether they're new or used.

And if your experience is anything like mine, I'll bet that there will be hundreds and hundreds of dollars worth of value that will flow into your life from others simply who want to give things to a good home. If you want to be given more things, just become a good home.

Here's one more tip in closing. If you're looking for something, talk from time to time about the things that you're looking for. Let people know what you're in the market for so that they can keep their eyes open for you. I experienced this recently. I talked about how our blender, we had this cheap blender that we got somewhere and it was just steadily dying.

Every time I would use it, the motor would send off a whiff of smoke and the smell of smoke, not an actual whiff of smoke, but it would just kind of smell that electric burning smell that makes you say, "This motor is not going to last too long." And so we've been keeping our eyes open, just waiting on a deal.

And so I mentioned it on the show in passing. And I've had so many of you wonderful people just write to me. I had people write to me and talk to me about the virtues of a Vitamix, which by the way, I forget your name to the listener who sent me that, sent me the analysis, the financial analysis of how valuable a Vitamix is.

Yes, I agree. It was well done. And I've been thinking for a few years about getting a Vitamix. Just haven't – it's not worth the $300-something to me yet. I need to be sure that I'm going to be using it enough. But I had a listener who said, "We just got a new Vitamix.

We'd love to send you our old blender," and packaged it up and shipped it to me. That thing is awesome. It's wonderful. It's absolutely wonderful and it's such a blessing. So thank you to the listener who sent that. I appreciate it very much. It's a real blessing and it makes way better waffles than our other one did.

But I use that as an example that if you let people know what you're looking for, then they can activate a network and they'll look for it for you. We do this frequently. If I'm going to need to get an appliance or something or we're on the market for something or we're running short on something, we just tell people, "Hey, by the way, keep your ears open." And so many times when you tell somebody, "Hey, keep your ears open for such and such.

We're looking for such and such. We're looking for a new rocking chair. We're looking for some new clothes for the baby. We're looking for whatever," and mention that to a few people, especially the good deal hounds that you know, and all of a sudden, so frequently, a few weeks later, it shows up.

It's totally for free. "Oh, I saw so-and-so was getting rid of it," or, "I mentioned to so-and-so that you were looking for such and such," and here it is. So be a good home and then share with others what you're looking for. And when you start to use these networks, these informal networks, it can put major money to your bottom line, which you can use for other more pressing expenses.

There are some things that you can almost never find in the used market or that never find in the free market by getting the things that you can in the used and the free market that frees up money for those things or just frees up money for stacking up and investing.

Try it. I bet you'll like it. This show is part of the Radical Life Media network of podcasts and resources. Find out more at RadicalLifeMedia.com. Don't just dream about paradise. Live it with Fiji Airways. Escape the ordinary with Fiji Airways Global Beat the Rush Sale. Immerse yourself in white sandy beaches or dive deep into coral reefs.

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