Struggling with your electric bill? Get an energy assist from SDG&E and save. You may qualify for an 18 percent discount. Visit SDG.com/FERA to find out more. Today on Radical Personal Finance, how do you increase your income when you just can't see how it's possible because you're sick, you're weak and you're busy trying to live life and get healthier?

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 today we round out a solid week of shows dedicated to nothing but your income.

Part of the launch celebration for the new Radical Personal Finance Increase Income course. The launch window for the course here will indeed be open for a month, so you'll hear me continue to talk about it. But I've got done these back to back shows here all about income as part of the celebration.

If you are haven't heard yet, I'd be shocked. But come on by RadicalPersonalFinance.com/IncreaseIncome and sign up for the course. It is cheaper now than it will ever been, that it will be again for you. Price increase is coming up tomorrow. So if you'd like to sign up today, it's going to be cheaper.

Price goes up by 100 bucks tomorrow. Be open for another three weeks. The close date that I will be closing the course is June 6, 2018 for the summer session. But sessions are already going. We already had our first Q&A session. Next one is coming up tomorrow night. And so if you're interested, come on by RadicalPersonalFinance.com/IncreaseIncome and sign up.

It's going to be a great course. I'll give it you'll have it forever. It's only going to get better from here and you can help me make it get better. I've got some great questions, great content. I've already written out six new outlines for six new modules that I'm going to add based upon listener questions.

So it's off to a good start. Thank you also to so many of you who have emailed me to share with me your thoughts, your questions, your feedback. That is so valuable. It gives me good feedback and we're going to continue to make things better and better. If you are not interested in increasing income, don't worry.

Or because for whatever reason, that's fine. I've got lots more stuff in the works. So stay tuned for that. But today I want to answer a question by a listener who writes in with this question. She says, Joshua, I've just listened to your latest show and I've deleted Facebook from my phone.

I did it before, but you inspired me to do it again. I totally understand where you're coming from. Interrupt the question to say good. I hope it's a good thing for you. One point of clarification based upon a couple of emails that I have received. I am not entirely opposed to social media.

I can name some good things for social media. And even from the perspective of business and your ability to build a business, it's possible that you can use social media very effectively in building your business. There are businesses that you can build and advertise today that simply would not be possible.

10 years ago, absent social media. Now, I do think for many businesses, social media, the value of social media is wildly overblown. But for some businesses, it can work. I'm not totally mad at social media, but running a business page for your business is very different than personally flipping through constantly, absently.

So I hope that for this listener, I hope that it's a good experience for you. Listener continues and writes this, "I wonder if you could perhaps speak about the issue of how poor health can affect one's ability to earn money and have a high income. Two years ago, I had breast cancer and it changed my whole life.

I had to leave my high paying job and to claim social security benefits for over a year. I live in England, so no medical costs, etc. But my husband has had to take on a lot of responsibility for running the household and looking after the children. We had to cut our expenses radically and it has impacted our ability to save and invest for retirement.

Anyway, I've now gone back to work at a part-time job, but it's very different than before. My question is this, how do we increase earnings when we can't see how it is feasible? I'm not strong enough and my husband is too busy with his job and the extra responsibilities of caring for me, the children and the home.

What can we do?" And this listener's name is Sarah. Now, if you're anything like me, I would imagine that your heart goes out to Sarah and her family. And you've probably known a lot of people who have been in similar situations. Perhaps you yourself are going through a situation like this.

And on today's show, I'll do my very best to help you with some ideas that you can take and translate into your situation. I will, as usual, try to stay in the radical territory, stay in the world of extremism, partly because you might need that, but also partly because I want to shock you into thinking about life differently than you're accustomed to thinking about it.

And when you go through a situation like this with a health, major health disruption, perhaps major health scare, it has a way of changing you. And I think that's good. I think that's very, very good. If you consider an event such as a major health concern, a cancer diagnosis or a heart attack or things like that, many people will report on the backside of such an event that it has turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

If I were to look back over my own life, many of the challenges that I have faced, in hindsight, I wouldn't trade them for anything. Even when things don't go well, even when I fail, even when things are difficult in hindsight, usually those are the experiences that are really transformative for me.

Now, I'm thankful that they come out of our control most of the time, because it's very hard to get all that excited about a difficult situation. But I'm also thankful that with a little bit of adult perspective, you can look back and say, "Hey, these things were good. These things were useful." Now, for me personally, I can never face a trial or a trouble or a challenge without thinking of a passage of scripture that comes from my personal favorite book in the Bible, which is the book of James.

James, of course, written by the half-brother of Jesus. And he wrote it when he was an old man. And James has an interesting story. It's one of my favorite characters, because according to the normal—well, we don't need a whole backstory, but just this particular verse in James is really important to me.

And it's one of those that if you're into memorizing scripture, I commend it to you. But in the beginning of the book of James, it says this, "Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds. For you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.

And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing." And then I personally always look at the solution, which is in the next verse. "If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.

But let him ask in faith with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord. He is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways." Now, that particular passage in many ways could simply be my answer to this question.

But of course, I like to talk for an hour. And how could I stop after six minutes? But there is in that, I think, a valid outline of how to approach the situation. Be thankful for the trial, be thankful for the circumstance, and allow it to do a good work in your life.

Allow it to build in you steadfastness and let that steadfastness have its full effect. But if you need wisdom, look for wisdom. Ask God for wisdom to apply to your situation. The situation can indeed be useful for good. I think that the first place to start is to recognize that getting your health back and investing your income and your assets in regaining health is logically your highest priority.

Years ago, I sold a lot of disability income insurance when I was an insurance agent. And one of my primary tools I learned, I used to study sales materials. And when I started as a young insurance agent, you would get together all these brochures and things, and I thought that was the way to sell.

But then I started to continue to study sales, and I learned that most people's eyes would glaze over with a brochure. And after a couple of years of experience, I got to the point where when I ever went out on a sales call, I just skipped all of the stuff.

I skipped all of the brochures. I skipped all the collateral. I skipped all of the fancy stuff, the presentations on the iPad. I skipped all that stuff. And I just would go out with a financial calculator, a legal pad, and a pen. But I had these various sales presentations that I developed to try to really focus on the concepts that were valuable.

And I never went through a financial planning appointment with somebody who was earning income and not financially independent without doing my very best to sell them disability income insurance. And the way that I started was to make a list of assets. And I would just simply on a legal pad write down a list of assets.

And I would usually, it's been a few years now, so I'm forgetting the exact order that I would use. But I would write down, I would say, you know, your savings, your investments, your health, your income, your car, your house. I would make a list of those six assets.

And I would turn them around and I would hand my prospective client a pen. And I would say, tell me which of those you think is the number one most important asset. Play this game with me for a moment. I repeat your savings, your investments, your health, your income, your house and your car.

If you were to list those in order of most important to least important, which of those would you say is your number one most valuable asset? Now, most people, when faced with this list, would look first at their investment account because it's a big one. But then they would continue down the list and say health and income, what do you mean?

And usually most people, after clarifying, I just mean your physical health, they would say, oh, my health is my most important asset. And I would work them through the whole list and they would go one, two, three, four, five, six. And interestingly, in that process, one and two were always the same.

I never told people what to do. I just made them go through the whole list and rank them. And 99.5% of the time, every person to whom I've given this test would always choose health as number one and income as number two, followed by everything else. And the everything else would change if they had a house or if they had a car, if they had a big investment account or a lot of savings.

But one and two were always health and then income. And the reason is obvious because without your health, what do you have? It's really hard to enjoy having a lot of money when you feel really bad. It's really hard to enjoy a fancy ski boat out on the lake when you're lying in bed, staring out the window, too sick to get out of bed.

Health is really the foundation of life. And the same obvious thing with income. It's very difficult to build income when you don't have health. And yet income can replace everything else on that list. If you have health, then you can build income. And income can replace everything else on the list.

Now, if you don't have disability income insurance. And yet you're dependent on your income. Stop what you're doing and go buy some. Learn from Sarah's experience and listen to how hard everything that I'm about to share with Sarah is. It's a lot easier if you can sit back and just simply have a check coming in from the insurance company and focus all your time on getting better.

Pretend that you earn $8,000 a month at your job and you get a breast cancer diagnosis. Now, if you don't have disability income insurance, now you're too sick to go to work. You're trying to deal with the fear and the uncertainty and the administrative trauma of negotiating a medical system to try to figure out how you're going to improve your health condition.

And you have to do the whole thing with no money. If you're in Sarah's situation, your husband is also trying to work and bring money in to pay the rent, pay the mortgage, pay for the children, help with the children, et cetera, because you're sick in bed. You're trying to recover, trying to focus on your health.

That's not real fun. Now, disability income insurance doesn't necessarily solve your health problem. You may still die from breast cancer. You may still be very, very sick and miserable. But if you were making $8,000 a month before your breast cancer diagnosis, at least if you have $6,000 a month coming in under U.S.

income tax law, income tax free, if it's a personally owned, personally paid for disability income insurance policy, at least that $6,000 a month income tax free can go a long way towards keeping food in your refrigerator and helping you to have the peace of mind to recover more quickly and get back to work.

So learn from Sarah's experience and go and buy disability income insurance. Don't waste time. Don't think, "Oh, I'll do it next year." Go and do it today. Now that you've done that, let's talk about what to do if you can't get insurance, or let's talk about what Sarah can do.

I think it makes sense for you to invest your income and your assets into regaining and rebuilding your health to whatever extent necessary. I think it makes logical sense if you know of a way to increase your health by draining your bank accounts, by draining your investment accounts, by selling your house and your car, etc.

I think it makes logical sense to do that and to prioritize your health over your money. I really don't see any other way around it. Now, you can't always spend money to buy health. And if you can't, there's no reason to spend money foolishly. But if you can spend money to buy health, do it.

Years ago, I worked with a client, and this particular client, I forget the details of it here at the moment, but this particular client, older clients in their retirement age, in their 60s, she was facing a significant health problem. And the details are coming back now. She had been exposed to some dangerous chemicals at work.

And these dangerous chemicals were really having a damaging effect on her health. And that they were sitting here trying to figure out how they did investment planning with, you know, they had $30,000 in their bank account. They're trying to figure out how do they invest it for their retirement.

But she was really sick. I looked at him, I said, "You should take this $30,000 and you should spend it on getting healthy." Here where I live in Florida, there's a world famous natural holistic health center called Hippocrates Health Institute. It's a cool place. But people come from all around the world who are in really serious medical conditions as kind of a last ditch nutritional treatment therapy for their health conditions.

It doesn't have to be a last ditch thing, but they have a lot of people who have advanced forms of cancer, etc. And they will go into hardcore health treatments with nutritional treatments. And it's a neat place. You can go by, you can have lunch there. You can go for some of the seminars.

They have various programs. I told her in her situation, it seemed like there was a good chance that detox, one of their radical detox programs could improve. And they knew about it, etc. I said, "Take the money and go and do the Hippocrates program." If you think I'm wrong, just show me why and where.

But is not the point of money to be useful? And wouldn't you rather be healthy and work for the next 30 years than be sick and miserable for the next three so you can have more money left behind for someone when you die? Or to be sick and miserable for the next three and have a little bit of money going on and be miserable?

Better to be healthy and working than not. There was a client that I worked with. He was in his mid-seventies and he had some money, but he didn't have a lot of money. But this man was, he was a beast. He was a big dude and he played beach volleyball.

And he was ripped. He was athletic. He dressed well. He had a sales job. He was loving life. He had a relatively simple and easy sales job, making $250,000, $300,000 a year, living in Fort Lauderdale. He would go down to the beach, play beach volleyball several days per week.

He had no intention of retiring and he was hale and hearty, vigorous and active. That's a better ambition than saying, "I want to have a lot of money." Now his health was one of those things that allowed him to be in that situation. His physical vibrancy and vitality is what made his lifestyle in his seventies really rich and rewarding.

He had plenty of income. He could live well. He could save a little bit of money and he was very happy. So invest your income and your assets into your health to whatever extent necessary. But let's assume you've done that, or let's assume you've already done that. How can you improve your situation?

I think first, recognize that earning more income might not be feasible for you. At least not when done in the normal way. There are many health conditions that people have that keep them in a situation where they are able to be productive. They are able to do things. They are able to produce useful work, but they can't do it on the industrial time system.

They can go to work and they can work well for three or four hours a day, but they can't sit at a desk for eight hours a day. They can produce useful and valuable work, but they don't know if they're going to be able to do it in the morning or the afternoon.

They don't know if Monday's going to be a good day or Tuesday's going to be a good day. Many times people who are sick and who are going through treatment, it's a day by day, hour by hour challenge, and the conditions can change drastically. And that makes it very hard to hold down a job.

That makes it very hard to be productive because in the industrial management system, you're expected to be there at eight and leave at five and to put eight good hours in between. And so it's not so much usually that people who are sick or recovering from cancer, et cetera, are spending all of their time in bed, unable to do anything useful.

Rather, it's that they just can't hold down a job because the employer's needs and their needs are very different. So the first thing that I would recommend is look to minimize your need for income by taking over some of your own services. And be extreme if you can or if you need to be, because there are many things that you can still do for yourself that if you took over them, it would minimize your need for income in the first place.

Let's walk through some expenses and let me talk to you about just different ways that you could reduce or eliminate your need for expenses, for income for certain expenses. The biggest, most obvious expense that most of us have is housing, rent payments or mortgage payments. Here I say to you this, move in with family, move in with friends.

It's good for you and it's good for them. In our modern era, we have this idea that you have to go it alone. Our communities are so fractured that it feels that the sense of community is really diminished. At least it is in the world that I live in.

But it doesn't have to be that way. Usually what keeps it that way is our pride or our Western standards of what's right and wrong. Now, if you hate your family, probably not a good idea for you to move in with them when you're sick. But at least for me, I think it's really valuable to be with family when you're sick.

And if you have a working relationship, if you can have a positive relationship, if you're, if the schisms in your family are not irreconcilable, move in with friends or family. It can be good for you and good for them. Here's the reality. Many people in our modern world, the only thing they know how to do is to be an industrial cog in the industrial machine.

And they're so accustomed to just buying everything that they lose the value. They misunderstand the value that having somebody present in the home can actually bring. To get this in today's world, you usually have to go to a religious minority or to an ethnic minority. To get the value of it.

But something like a grandmother in the home. If you've never lived in a home where there was a mother or a grandmother always there, you're missing out. You are underprivileged. Somebody being in the home brings a sense of warmth, a sense of community, a sense of belonging. The family becomes less of people, just economic units, making money, everything.

You know, it's all about how much money we can make and who can bring home and let's pay the bills. And it becomes a home. It turns a house into a home. And so you may be able to, Sarah, in this situation, you may be able to do that and help other friends or other family.

You may have brothers, brothers-in-law, et cetera. And you may be able to work out a new living situation where you can go and you can live with them and some of the things that you're able to do. Some basic housework, some basic cooking. Those things can be very valuable.

And yet in return, they can care for you and it can lower your expenses. There's such this intense Western pride and our families are so fractured and broken apart that many people view this as a last case scenario or a worst case scenario. I don't know that I would call it a first case scenario, especially in the idea that from your email, I know that you have husband and children, but I would look very carefully at an idea like this.

Or look radically at your living situation. Is there a way that you can buy a trailer or the English equivalent and park it on somebody's property? So that way you have a separate living quarters, but you're close to them. It's very hard for people to give you money when you're sick and in need because most people have budgeted all of their money towards their own living expenses.

If your brother and your sister live on $5,000 a month, it would be a very big imposition for them to each commit to giving you $750 a month so you can make your $1,500 a month house payment. But frequently your brother or your sister or your friend or other people in your life, frequently they would be happy to use an asset that they have and allow you to use it.

So your brother might have a large enough lot that you can park a trailer out back, or he might have a garage that he's currently parking his car in that you could move into for a period of time. And the value to you is $1,500 a month. But the money out of his pocket is basically zero.

That can be a really powerful win-win idea. It's the same thing as moving in with the house, but perhaps easier because you can still maintain a slight family independence because you'll have a little bit more personal space. Buy a tent. Move into a tent in the country. One of the things that I think most people should have is a large tent suitable for actually living in.

Not the kind of thing you go down to the big box store and buy the $130 tent that is useless after a week or two. And not the $500 or $1,000 tent that you actually use to go and camp in, but a wall tent. You can get a military surplus wall tent or in the United States, I don't know about the English tent situation, but in the United States you can buy something like a canvas wall tent.

If I were sick, I would find somebody with a big backyard. I would set up a tent and I would say, can we live in this tent? Now it's a little hard in Florida because air conditioning is certainly valuable, but in England, put a wood stove. They're all built to come with a wood stove and you can make them really, really beautiful.

For a few thousand dollars, you can build a wood deck to serve as your foundation, install a wood stove to keep you warm, bring in nice couches, set up one for the children, set up one for the, set up one for the children, set up one for you and your husband, set up a living tent to cook in and to be in.

These types of things work really well as a temporary, a temporary means. And that could completely eliminate your $1,500 a month house payment, or again, buy an RV, et cetera. Or look at a way to arrange for your living expenses in a way where your work is part of it.

Find some kind of live-in job like house sitting. Again, this may be difficult for you with children and a husband, but there are many people who are in poor health, but they're healthy enough to walk a dog a few times a day and they're healthy enough to keep an eye on a house.

Those services are valuable to the right kind of person. Or perhaps you can go and volunteer your labor in another location. Perhaps your health condition is something that could be improved by a good quality source of food. Well, go and work as a WUFAR, the Workers on Organic Farms movement.

You can go and they'll provide for you housing and you can do five or six hours of work per day. Now you may not be able to go out and labor in the field, but can you labor in the kitchen? Can you be a source of encouragement? Can your husband labor in the field and you guys work together to provide for the needs?

I'd a whole lot rather be living on an organic farm where all of the food is coming from that farm. Living with people who are intentional about their life decisions in a positive environment with few of the stresses of city life. And we have a place to live. We have basic living quarters.

The children are out helping on the property and we're all working together on this organic farm instead of laboring, living on a government program in the city with just enough money to pay our rent. Now those are extreme ideas, but they're not stupid ideas. Those are extreme ideas, but they only seem extreme because we're so used to being those industrial cogs in a wheel and we don't ever stop and think about how practically the rest of the world functions.

Let me buzz through some other expenses, homeowners, renters insurance, things like this. Drop it if you can. Now homeowners insurance is hard, at least in the United States, because it's a contractual commitment. And if you have a mortgage on your property, that's hard, but drop it if you can't or if you can get away with it.

If I were sick and the question is between homeowner's insurance or a little bit more money and I didn't have a mortgage or had the ability to drop it, I would drop it. Now, could it be a problem if your house burns down? Absolutely. But deal with that later.

Renters insurance is easy. Sell your expensive stuff and dump the insurance. What about other things, things around the house? Home maintenance, home repairs, lawn care. Can you barter with your neighbors? Do you have a neighbor of yours who's a handyman who also has a dog? Can you make a deal with them and say, "Listen, we're going through a tough time.

Could we, would you have an interest in our walking or a dog sitting, walking your dog or dog sitting for you? Or can I bake you some fresh bread, a couple loaves of fresh bread and some, some home-baked goodies, you know, once a week, I'll bring you some home-baked goodies in an exchange.

Would you be willing to cut our lawn for us and cut out your lawn bill or whatever your version of that?" If you're sick, just because you're sick, doesn't mean you're useless. Again, you may have good days and bad days, but on your good days, go in the kitchen and bake some fresh baked goodies and share them with your neighbor in exchange for your neighbor coming over and caring for your lawn.

Go hardcore with eliminating your car expenses. Sell your car. Dump the car, dump the car payment, dump the fuels, dump the tires and the maintenance and the taxes and all that stuff. Ask friends to help give you rides. Or of course use a taxi or a ride sharing service.

But if you could just dump your car payments and drop your monthly expenses by $500, your friends would be happy to help you with rides. It's hard for them to give you $500, but they'd be happy to help you with rides to your oncology appointments. If you're home and if you're sick, you have the time to do research on how to cut all of your other expenses.

You cut your electric bill and you don't use lights during the day. You only have one lamp at night and you unplug everything. You put up blankets on the windows to keep the heat in, or you sit outside under the tree in the heat of the day. Instead of sitting inside and running the air conditioning, you have the time to change your circumstances.

Use less water. You wash your dishes in a dish pan instead of running the dishwasher or running the water constantly or watering the lawn. You stop watering the lawn. You build a solar oven and you have the time to, to use the solar oven instead of cooking with gas.

You quit your phone bill. You get rid of your phone and you buy a CB radio, one for you and one for your husband's truck, or you borrow somebody's internet service. You cut off your internet service and you build a long range wifi antenna and you make a deal with the guy across the street to use his internet network and use a cheap cell phone without a plan in it, working over a wifi app to communicate using the long range wifi antenna that you built.

Cut out your internet service. You cut off your cable, your satellite, you read books or you get audio books from the library. With your food, you start working on growing your own groceries. You need high quality nutrition when you're sick, but you can't afford it. So you got to figure out how to get in and grow your own groceries in your backyard.

Is there an immediate return? Yeah. Vegetables grow pretty quickly. Is there a good financial return? Well, the reason many people don't think there is, is because they're looking and saying, well, I earn $10,000 a month and I'm only going to get a few hundred dollars of savings, but in your case, you're basically, if you could have a little space and if you get a little balcony, do some container gardening, grow your expensive herbs, grow your expensive vegetables, and you're printing tax-free nutrition right on your back patio.

Start dumpster diving or whatever else that you need to do, but care for your own children. Teach your own children. You have the time to pull them out and instead of them having to pay teachers or provide for childcare, you work out arrangements to do that. Close yourself from the side of the road.

You've got time to go dumpster diving. Whatever extreme examples, figure out what your expenses are. But you can cut your expenses and that can create and free up income. Take advantage of government programs for income. That's supposedly why they exist. Of course, you have many more of those available in England than the United States, but this is the time to take advantage of those.

And it'll be more profitable for you, at least under the US American system, more profitable for you to spend your time growing your groceries in your backyard, providing your entertainment, building your long range wifi antenna to use the neighbor's wifi so that you can continue to have the benefits, the government benefits from the welfare programs to help you in your time of need.

Now to build income. If you can't take a job or can't take a high paying job because of your health condition, that doesn't mean you can't earn income. I don't know what the options are that would apply for you, but there are all kinds of unusual sources of income using the assets in your life that frankly, most people ignore, but you could use them.

Look at your house and say, how can we turn this house into a productive asset? If you have a four bedroom house, move you and your family into two of the bedrooms and rent two of them out. You can do that when you're sick. Maybe you can use your house and it can be an option where it's used for providing daycare services for the neighbor's children.

Perhaps you can team up with a neighbor who can do some of the active work and you can help out around the side, but you can use your house. Look at your property and say, how can this property be maximized? I always look where I live. There's a lot of Hispanic people.

And one of the things I always like about the Hispanic people is that usually, especially if they are new immigrants, they're much less obsessed with how their houses look and more interested in how their houses perform. And it's not unusual to go and houses with just a little bit of land.

It's not unusual to find a house where the entire property is a nursery. They got palm trees planted and nice lines all around the property here in Florida. They're all kind of, there's a huge business for palms. You can sell palms that are mature for a lot of money.

So they got the house, the property planted with palm trees. They're all planned to be grown and to sell. They've got, they're growing little plants, ornamental plants, vegetables. They're selling plants off their front driveway. They're turning their entire property into a useful, productive asset. What's the point of having a manicured, perfect lawn that you pay a guy to come and cut when you can instead plant thousands of plants in pots that you can sell right out of your front driveway?

There's a guy I used to buy plants from, Chinese guy, had about five acres and his entire property was the most incredible thing. You would never know it when you drove by, but when you stopped and talked to the guy, the entire thing was just loaded with fruit and fruit trees and weird vegetables and all of this really great Asian fruit, these really great Asian fruits that you couldn't find anywhere.

And I would buy mango trees from him and all these interesting Asian species of fruit trees. And he made a ton of money on that stuff. That's the kind of thing that you could do. It may take a little while to get there, but look at your assets. My point is take that, translate it for your situation.

Look at your assets and say, what do I have? Do you have a driveway? What kinds of things would your neighbors buy? Look at your children. Children are assets. They can produce and help your family. Now in the modern world, we think for some reason that the best way to produce useful adults is to take children and spend all of our lives giving them everything that they need, sorry, everything that they want.

We have a responsibility to our children to give them what they need, but giving them everything that they want. So the parents serve the children and then turn around and wonder why at 27 years old, their child is still content sitting at home being served by the parents. How can you use your children?

How can they produce and serve the family? What skills do they have? What abilities do they have? What useful things can they do? You may not be able to go out and cultivate the garden, but can you direct the planting and can your children cultivate the garden? Children should produce for the family.

They should be a productive part of the family. So what could they do in your context? What personal skills do you have? What skills could you develop? There are a lot of people who would appreciate if somebody just on the side could do a few things for them. Maybe a little bit of part-time bookkeeping, a little bit of every now and then cleanup, a little bit of help driving them to medical appointments.

Perhaps you have the ability to drive and you can find an older person who has a car and the deal can be simple. They'll let you use their car if for the most part, as long as you're feeling well enough, you can drive them to their appointments that can be a win-win situation.

And then finally for today, look at businesses and think about what your needs are as far as what things could you do if you were to build it as a business and you were to, given the constraints of your situation. I recently spoke with a listener of the show and this listener really had a fascinating story, but she had previously worked in a high paying or in a kind of a high stress corporate job and she'd quit all of that and she had started a business doing dog waste removal, going to people's yards and collecting dog feces from their yard so that their yards didn't have piles of dog poop all over the place.

I was so interested in her business and here's why I'm telling it to you. It's the type of business that is awesome because it's gross. The dirtier and the gross at the job, the more the employer has to pay to get it done. If you were offered $10 to go and to pick fruit and $10 to go and pick up dog feces, most people would pick the fruit.

That means that the person who wants the dog feces picked up usually would have to pay $12 or $13 to the person who wants to come and pick up the dog feces, whereas the person who's saying pick fruit would only have to pay $10. The same is true in just about any industry.

If you want to go and drive a truck, pumping out people's septic tanks, they're going to have to pay that truck driver more than Uber will pay their driver to drive people around from the airport to their home. That's why Uber pays so little, but the septic tank pumping guy gets paid a lot more.

But this lady's business was so interesting because she took her a number of years to build it up, but it was all about just marketing, finding clients. She worked about five hours a day and her clients had a commitment as far as what day she was going to be there.

But she didn't have any hard time commitment. And it was a very financially productive business. She was making good money. She'd been doing it for a number of years and as we talked about her, she loved it. I asked her all the questions, how she built the business, how she marketed it, the kind of equipment she needed.

It's the kind of idea that I like to have tucked away in my back pocket to help people in my life who need that kind of business, where they're unhirable or they just don't want to work in the corporate environment. But it's the type of business that is perfectly suited to somebody perhaps like you because there's some flexibility with your time and with your schedule.

You may be able to work 20 hours a week and go and drive to your customers, uh, homes and, and, and do the work that you've agreed to, to remove the dog feces from their yard. But you don't have to do it on a tight schedule. So if you're having a good day or a bad day, you can deal with that as that time comes up.

I've known people who've made their entire living picking up scrap metal. I've known people who've made their entire living, um, uh, fixing up small engines. They buy something cheap, fix it up, buy and sell stuff on Craigslist. There's all kinds of things like that. Back to the comments that I was making about children.

This is the, this is the type of thing that your children can work in with you and they can be really useful to you. Scrap metal, for example, every week there's somebody that drives around and picks up scrap metal, uh, here where I live. I talk to the guys sometimes, none of them are making a lot of money.

They're not making $150,000 a year, but they're making a few thousand dollars a month, but what's required in that? Got to be able to drive and to pick things up. So you may not have the physical strength due to your health constraints to physically pick up scrap metal items off of the trash, off of the curb, but your children might.

So you and your children, it can be a thing that you do together where you do the driving and they do the loading and that extra couple thousand dollars of income may be enough to provide for your lifestyle. Same thing with dumpster diving, same thing with all of these kind of fringe businesses that people do.

If you don't know what they are in your area, go and find the immigrants and start talking to them. Go find the poor people and start talking to them and see what they have. I don't pretend that this is kind of a sexy and as fun as looking at a business and saying, Hey, let's start some awesome multimillion dollar business.

I love multimillion dollar businesses. That is so fun. But if you're not there, don't give up hope. There are things that you can do. You do have valuable skills. You do have things that you do that, that can help other people. I could give story after story, after story of people that have all these interesting little home-based businesses.

I know this one lady, she cooks these apple, what are they called? They're like fried apple pies. She sells them for so much money and she'll take a couple of days a week and she cooks these things and she sells them. You may or may not have the physical strength to do that, or you might have the physical strength to do the cooking because you're not going to be able to cook them, or you might have the physical strength to do the cooking because you can spread that out and have somebody else sell them for you, but I think she sells them for like six or $8 a piece at a local market, a local venue where there are people.

If you can bake 300 pies, sell them for six bucks a piece, I'll do the math for you, that's $1,800 of income. People doing it. So be creative, spend time. I hope these, there are of course dozens more ideas that we could go through, but look in your situation, trying to figure out what do people need?

What do people value here? What are the things that we could do here? And if there are no opportunities, move, go somewhere else where you can start things again. The great thing is this, you're having an opportunity to look at your life differently. I try not to be too critical about modern lifestyles, but I just say this, most of the stuff that I observe, at least when I read people, when I read what they write, when I look at their lives and whatnot, the industrial cog in the machine life, some people love it.

I don't get why. There's a time and a place for it. It's a lot easier to make a hundred thousand dollars with going into a corporate job, et cetera. Than it is to make a hundred thousand dollars working on an organic farm. But is your quality of life really all that much better?

You'll have to judge that. Hope these ideas are useful for you, Sarah. I hope that they give you a place to start and I wish you all the best, just recognize this. It's not always going to be this way. Things will change. And so when you're in the middle of a problem, do your best just to keep going and don't be scared to spend money as needed.

Don't be scared to focus and to be crazy. There's never an easy, it's hard sometimes for people for whom everything is going well, but I just want to get out of debt. It's hard for them to tell their friends and family, yeah, we're moving out of our house, we're moving into a tent.

It's hard for them to go to their mom and dad and say, mom and dad, can we rent the back cottage from you so we can get out of debt? But when you got cancer, when you got breast cancer, it should be a little easier. And even if you were dying, even if you expected that, well, I got breast cancer and I got a few years to live, it should be even easier in that situation.

Sell the house, move into the back cottage, move into the tent, get rid of the car, go travel the world, do something. But it should be easier because people empathize with that in that situation. I guess I don't want to, I don't want the most important thing I said to get lost in the profusion of ideas.

I guess I would just say that recognize that it's easier for people to help you if it doesn't cost them money. So look for things that other people need or other people have and don't be scared to ask for help. We all want to help when you're in a difficult situation.

So I hope these ideas will spark you, take them, interpret them for your local situation. This is, this today's show is not the core of what I've built in the new Increase Income course, but it is certainly, well, it's not the core, but it is certainly not antagonistic to it.

And the principle is this, what do you have? What assets do you have? What can you do and what can people buy? So if you're interested in learning more, remember today, I'd love for you to come and buy today. Go to radicalpersonalfinance.com/increaseincome. If this is useful, if you appreciate the ideas that I've shared with you on the show, come and check out the course.

Money-back guarantee for free for 30 days. Come try it for 30 days. Get on the calls with me. Let's talk about your situation. I'll help brainstorm ideas and solutions for you. Try it risk-free for 30 days. Go to radicalpersonalfinance.com/increaseincome and buy today, please. radicalpersonalfinance.com/increaseincome. Be back with you tomorrow and 80% likelihood I'll do a non-income show for you tomorrow in case you're just making so much money and you're ready for something else.

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