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That's FijiAirways.com. From here to happy. Flying direct with Fiji Airways. 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 Josh when today I'm going to share with you on a topic that's near and dear to my heart, but I'm doing so not as a expert, but as an as a fellow traveler, as a fellow journeyer down this path, enjoying living my rich life now while working towards financial freedom and financial independence.

And part of that comes with weathering life's storms. The latest storm is that this was the week that my family and I were going to be packing up and hitting the road in our RV. And that's been quite the challenge. We're already about three months behind our anticipated schedule.

And then of course, it's challenging to move. Anytime you move, that's disruptive to your life. Just to pack things up and move from one house to another, that's challenging. Moving with little children is challenging. Moving from a house into an RV is challenging. And then moving while working to maintain a business and all of that is extra challenging.

Well, that was compounded this weekend when my tow vehicle, my big diesel pickup truck that I bought to pull our travel trailer with was stolen and pretty beat up, pretty messed up by the thieves this weekend. The backstory is I had the truck in the shop for a few last minute fixes before heading out on the trip.

One of which was to have the tinting repaired on the front two windows. Usually when you buy an older vehicle, yes, you can save a lot of money in depreciation, but you got a budget for fixing all the stuff that really should have been fixed previously. And one of those things was the tinting.

Old, it was bubbled. And so of course, who wants to set out across the country when you can hardly see out your windows? It does you no good to be somewhere beautiful if you can't see it. So it was having the tinting replaced. Well, Monday morning came in and went to pick up the vehicle only to find out that it was gone.

And it was stolen over the weekend from right out in front of the tint repair shop. On the truck, I have a big old or had, we'll get to that in a moment. I had a big old commercial truck topper, which gives me a lot of storage space in the actual bed of the pickup truck.

And so because of that, they couldn't quite fit it in their shop. And so they left it out front and it was stolen over the weekend. So that started off Monday. And of course, what usually happens to me is I have very aggressive schedules. I have all kinds of things that I think I can get done.

I've had to learn to moderate my mouth because usually I think I can do about five times more than I can do actually. And that's frustrating to me because doing what I say I'm going to do is important to me. And so I put myself in a bind where the creative effusive part of my personality wants to make all kinds of commitments, but I can't actually follow through.

And then that causes me emotional turmoil to feel like I'm letting down on my commitments. And so I find that very challenging. Well, it was a busy week and then all of a sudden it's upset. We're now going to go meet the police and start to find and figure out what's going on.

Well, we filed the police report and we immediately found out that the license plate had been run by some other police officers over the weekend. So after working with the police for a while and finishing the necessary reporting, decided to go around and try to look for it and see if it had been abandoned anywhere near.

And so after driving around for a little while, we were able to actually find the pickup truck abandoned, but pretty much wrecked. Not totally wrecked. I haven't heard yet from the insurance adjuster. I doubt it'll be totaled, but pretty beat up. So for example, the topper was completely gone.

What it looks like the thieves did is first they stole my pickup truck and then they used it to commit other crimes. The police had other crimes, other attempted theft of vehicles and some other things where my vehicle was visible at the scene, which that's of course not a great feeling.

And in addition to that, they somehow, somewhere, our bet is they tried to use the truck to ram into an ATM. Basically they took my pickup truck and they drove it into something crazy hard in the back end. So hard that the trailer hitch, which of course I need, was completely destroyed, completely bent down about a foot and a half.

The tailgate of the truck is missing and the whole big giant commercial truck cap that I had on the back of it is entirely gone. Still haven't found it. I looked around to try to see if I could salvage it, but still haven't been able to find it. And then of course, then the truck is totally scraped up and just a bunch of cosmetic damage.

So that was my week today. And that was yesterday and that started off Monday morning. A busy week of activities, far more than I can ever actually accomplish, all of a sudden supplanted by something that is more high profile. And of course, everything is dependent upon our date that this week we're planning to hit the road and now that truck is not going to be ready on time.

So still working through to see whether it gets fixed, working with the insurance company and I don't know the end solution yet. But of course that's disruptive. Life is disrupted. When your stuff gets stolen and you have to then figure out, "Well now, what do I do?" When your stuff is stolen and destroyed by other people, then your life gets disrupted.

And it can be a big financial impact. So I thought today I'd like to share with you how some of the things that I've learned over the years to do and that I have done, which helped me to maintain really a sense of peace through the whole thing. A peaceful attitude and to enjoy financial peace, even through all the midst of turmoil.

Now I will share with you up front that peace and a peaceful life is very important to me. It may not be important to you. Many people don't seem to care about living a peaceful life. But that's really what I want. I want to live a peaceful life. I'd like to just be left alone to just live.

That's very important to me. I want a minimum of interference from other people. I want a minimum of interference from circumstances and I don't want a life that is rocked with drama. I want to live a very low drama lifestyle. Some people seem to thrive on drama. That's about the only way that I can make sense of the lives that some people live.

Some people thrive on adventure. But for me a high priority is peace, calm. I work well from a place of peace and I want to develop more and more of a peaceful personality, a peaceful lifestyle as time goes on. That's a high priority for me. And so that's reflected in my personality and in my decisions and the decisions that I have made.

Because you'll hear in a moment some of the decisions that I've made and that I encourage you to at least consider. And some of those decisions may be at odds with your desire for drama or your desire for a sense of adrenaline coming from your finances. Some people love to live so close to the edge that it's a constant drama to check their phone and see if their last check bounced.

They love to not know what the next phone call is going to be, but I don't. So here are some strategies that I've put in place over the years that have helped me to really have, even in the midst of all of the unexpected excitement, to have a peaceful attitude about it and to continue forward.

There are five total. Number one, recognize it's only money. This is sometimes hard to actually apply, but here is a maxim by which I that I seek to live out. If all I have are money problems, frankly, I don't really have any problems. I try to be a bit empathetic when saying something like that to people who are right at the edge.

But really, truly, if you only have money problems, you really don't have many problems. When you compare money problems to some of the other problems of life, matters of life and death, matters of war and peace, matters of emotional turmoil, money problems, they're not that big of a deal.

Money problems can be solved. No matter how deeply in debt you are, you can always get out. You can get out by working your way out. You can get out by starting another business. You can get out by declaring bankruptcy and starting over. You can always get out. No matter how deep in the hole you are and what a disaster your unemployment is, you can get another job.

No matter if you're losing your house, you can find another one. It's only money. There's a sense in which that's true. Now, of course, I affirm that money is important, but it's important to maintain that perspective. It's only money. It's not a matter of life and death. I've matured a lot in the last decade or so because when I was younger, I didn't have that perspective.

But I first became a financial planner in 2008, and I had the unique privilege of watching a number of people who had been very successful lose it all and start over. And today I know a number of them that walked through bankruptcy, their real estate empires collapsed, their businesses fell apart.

They walked through bankruptcy, they started again, and they're doing just fine. It's only money. So here's what I say. If I can write a check smaller than $10,000 and solve my problem, it's not worth worrying about. If I have to write a check bigger than $10,000, but I can still write a check and solve my problem, okay.

It's more serious, but still, it's not life and death. So number one, I always begin with that perspective. Number two, I always just start by recognizing I'm going to be okay. Now here are some strategies that I have put in place that have convinced me that I'm going to be okay.

First, I know by proof and by testing that I'm okay with very little. Of equal importance, I know by proof and testing that my wife is okay with very little. We have had very few financial resources. I've made big business mistakes, big investment mistakes. So we've had very limited resources.

And we've proven to one another that in the midst of turmoil, in the midst of problems, neither of us is going to freak out and start swiping credit cards. We're going to be okay. I've also systematically tested my limits over the years to recognize that I'm really okay with very little.

I've driven very humble vehicles. I've lived in very humble places. I have tested a form of asceticism, seeking to say, "How comfortable can I be with very little?" I like to do this just simply with camping. I think it's good for children, for example. Go camping and go car camping, but then sometimes just put stuff in a backpack and go way out.

And you can learn that you can be okay with very little. So I know I'm going to be okay. I've also seen the lifestyles that so many people live and I can find ways to make them adventurous. I read books on how to live as a hobo. I've often thought, "If I lost it all and I were just a bum living under a bridge, I'd be a happy bum." I talk to homeless people all the time.

I could be a happy bum. There are so many resources available today if you're a homeless bum living under a bridge. I could do well. With the entertainment that's accessible to you, for $30 a month that you can get panhandling, you buy a $50 smartphone and pay $30 a month and you have virtually unlimited data access, you can have the world's entertainment as a bum living under a bridge.

One time when I was in college, I was curious what it was like to be a panhandler. And so a buddy of mine, we went out and we panhandled for an afternoon. We wrote signs and I forget the exact syntax we used on the sign, but it was something like "Need money for college" because we were both in college.

We wrote something honest. We didn't say we were broke. We didn't say we were desperate. We just wrote, "Need money for college." And then we went and stood by the side of the road. We panhandled for an afternoon. It was one of the most unique experiences I've ever had.

It really impacted me. I got to understand what it was like to be the guy standing on the corner. And we did it almost as a lark. We were wearing normal clothes, probably flip-flops and khaki shorts or something like that, but just watching people avoid us, watching some people read the sign, enjoying the laugh that people would have as they gave us money.

I couldn't recite accurately the amount of money that we were given with our afternoon of panhandling. But it was not insubstantial. And so if I were forced to panhandle, I wouldn't go and do it in a serious way. I would go and work instead. But the point is, it's not that bad.

I encourage you, take advantage of these opportunities and test yourself. Do something that makes you uncomfortable and see if you're okay with it. Walk a mile in another man's moccasins. It would really help you. It helps you to understand people and to empathize in a way that perhaps you would find difficult in another context.

So whatever you're scared of, go and try it. And you'll be the one who will gain the most. I had a unique experience also when I was in college. I traveled to Egypt with some classmates. And this was a few years after 9/11. And we're coming back from Egypt and I had a few weeks of beard on my face.

And I thought it would be interesting to see what it would be like to be perceived as a Muslim traveling into the United States. And we were traveling through New York City. So on the trip back from Cairo back to Florida, passing through New York City, I wore a complete galabeya.

I wore the Egyptian robe. I had a beard and I wore a turban the whole time. So I looked pretty authentically basically Egyptian Muslim traveling into the United States. So I went through airport security. I watched everybody's eyes and I experienced what it was like to be profiled as a Muslim walking onto an airplane.

And it was fascinating getting onto an airplane in New York City, wearing a long robe and a turban, walking down. My seat was at the back of the airplane and walking down the aisle, experiencing everybody looking at me, it impacted me, changed my perspective. Those are just a few stories from my life in the past.

But the point of these stories is to say that over time you can cultivate an understanding that I'm okay with very little. You can practice, if you usually stay at the five-star hotel, sometimes go and stay at the $10 a night hostel. So you can find out that in traveling I don't only have to stay at the five-star hotel.

Build that resilience in yourself and it can help your self-confidence. I also have a clear worldview that shapes my acknowledgement that I'm okay with very little. The Christian religion, which I'm a part of, doesn't teach that money is the number one goal of life. The US American religion often does, but the Christian religion often doesn't hold that.

It doesn't teach that money is unimportant, but that it is put into its proper place. And perhaps in this context, the most important passage that personally shapes my attitude comes from the first book of Timothy. The writer says, "But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world and we cannot take anything out of the world.

But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils.

It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs. But as for you, O man of God, flee these things. Pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, and gentleness." So when comparing a financial problem to gaining a sense of its importance, the question I always say is, "Is it going to affect my food and clothing?

Because with food and clothing I can be content, and you can as well. With food and clothing, I have enough. I know people all around the world who don't have enough food and don't have enough clothing, but we who live in wealthy societies, we have more food and more clothing than we can handle.

We spend all of our time talking about how we can get rid of all of our clothing and live with just the bare minimum. It's rather remarkable how far we have come in terms of the wealth of a society. And so you can cultivate contentment as a virtue, and then from a place of contentment, you can enjoy the full riches of life.

So that's number two. I'm going to be okay. I'm okay with very little. Food, clothing, that's enough. That's enough. Nothing more is extra. I'm going to enjoy more, but food and clothing is enough. Number three, always live within, and preferably below, perhaps even far below, your means. The times that I have been most stressed have been caused by my own hand, because I didn't discipline my desires, rather I indulged them and lived beyond my means.

So by developing discipline and by living within means and below them, or even far below, the impact of harm and problems, like your truck getting messed up or your house burning down, those things can be of much less impact. So live within and preferably below your means. It was ironic, because on Saturday evening, which was the time at which my truck was being stolen, my wife and I were talking about some other RVers that we knew, and we were admiring their very beautiful RV that they had bought for their family.

Now, I don't know anything about their financial situation. I know nothing, so I'm merely speculating, but I'm aware of enough clues, due to experience as a financial planner, to think that they probably are not multimillionaires at this point in time. And they were looking in, bought a beautiful RV, and I just thought to myself, they were going full-time on the road, and I thought, "That would be so stressful, so stressful to make big decisions, to buy big fancy things when you haven't tested it." Maybe a year from now, two years from now, I doubt I'll still be RVing, but if I am, maybe I'll buy a big fancy beautiful rig.

But I'm not going to make big financial commitments when I have little actual knowledge. And I'm not going to make big financial commitments that would impact other aspects of my money, of my wealth. So by restricting yourself to lower cost, more frugal options, you buy freedom. Remember, if you look at people, and you study the psychology and the behavior of why certain people behave as they do, the people who drive a cheaper car and also have money, because many people drive cheap cars because that's all they have, but somebody who drives a cheaper car and has money, they don't do it because they don't like the fancier car.

They do it because they like something else more than they like the fancier car. My case, that's freedom and independence. So I'd rather have a not very fancy truck. I'd rather have a not very fancy trailer because what that means to me is more freedom, more independence now and 30 years from now, more peace, more rest.

I don't have to worry about my children destroying a brand new truck. We're going to learn to be good stewards of whatever we have. That's important. I don't want them destroying any truck, but I don't have to freak out if it gets scratched or hit, et cetera. So I value that freedom, that simplicity.

And I think it's proven out in terms of when the truck falls, when the truck gets stolen, it's going to be okay. It's going to be fine because the truck should be, as compared to your total wealth or my total wealth, it should be a very small figure, generally speaking.

Your house, if it burns down, that house should represent something significantly less than all of your wealth. I don't know what that right number is. I don't know of any way you could make an actual numerical formula. So just giving you a gut sense, a gut feeling here. But a wealthy person who lives in a $10 million house or a $100 million house, you can usually be pretty confident that their total wealth is not $10 million or $100 million.

They may live in a $100 million house, but they probably have several hundreds of millions elsewhere. But what's strange is it's not unusual to find somebody who lives in a $250,000 house whose total net wealth is tied up in that house. That's very normal. It's also very broke. So keep the stuff.

Don't diversify your money. Don't let all your money be tied up in a single thing. Because that way if your truck is stolen or your house burns down or your vacation cottage is ransacked or whatever the case is, it's not a wipeout blow. Keep it low. Don't allow yourself to have all your money tied up in one thing that can be destroyed.

Live within your means, preferably well below your means. The only reason I would hedge here is there are people who, for example, using the RV example, because that's the stage I'm at, there are people who are looking and saying, "I don't have a lot of money, but I'm going to trade in my rent for this motorhome." I understand that, but it's still a dangerous place to be and you should work as quickly as possible to make sure that that motorhome is only a small portion of your total wealth.

Buy right. Go slow. Be careful. One of the big benefits of living below your means is you can always get out with a minimum of stress. If you get in and you find out, "Hey, I don't like this," two months from now I may be speaking to you in front of a microphone saying, "Not for us." In that situation, put stuff up for sale.

Should be able to get most of my money out of it. Put stuff up for sale. Move on. That's number three. Live within and below your means. Number four, maintain spending flexibility. Most financial problems can be solved fairly quickly if you have spending flexibility. The challenge is many of us commit our budgets far in advance.

By committing our budgets far in advance, we don't have a lot of flexibility. I've encouraged in various occasions that you do a mental game. Consider the fact that you and perhaps your spouse, both of you just lost your job. If you had to cut your lifestyle to the bone, go as deep as you could, how would that impact you?

What would you do? How could you cut? If you could cut really low, you've got a lot of flexibility. Just because you could cut doesn't mean you have to cut, but the knowledge that you could cut can help you to get through most problems. If you have a car breakdown and you cut other expenses dramatically and then you then come back and increase your expenses after you replenish your emergency fund, that's a much less stressful way to do it than to all of a sudden now have to pay back a loan to the mechanic or the car place.

In any expense, you can't avoid all expenses. If you have rent, you can't avoid paying that rent, but hopefully that rent is as low as you can reasonably make happen as compared to your income. But many other expenses can actually be canceled in an extreme situation. I'm allergic to contracts.

The reason I'm allergic to contracts is because I've been burned. I usually find that I'd rather pay a little bit more if I had to in order to avoid a contract than to be in a place of a contract. You can't avoid contracts everywhere, but wherever you can, I encourage you to avoid them.

Perhaps I'm uniquely sensitive to this because so much of my personal income has been highly fluctuating for the last decade. There have been times when I made a ton of money and there have been times when all the money that I made just flowed right out and I made no money.

One of the unique attributes of the financial planning business is called chargebacks or I've forgotten the word of what it is, basically the equivalent of a chargeback where let's say that you sell an insurance policy and you get paid your commission. Well, you get paid your commission up front usually.

And then all of a sudden, your client that loved the insurance policy they bought, four months in decides they're going to cancel it. Well, they cancel it and all of a sudden, two-thirds of your commission is charged back to you and you go into the negative. And until you have a big enough stable form of income, in the financial world with financial product sales and financial planning, you can basically never trust that you're going to get paid next month because you don't know what's going to happen.

There may be times and there were times when I would write 10 insurance policies during a pay period. And then in the next pay period, a giant one was canceled and all the commissions disappeared from the other nine because the giant one was charged back. So that may have made me uniquely allergic to contracts, but I found it to be very helpful.

In thinking about RV lifestyle, I read several books from people who were teaching others how to travel full-time and live in an RV on social security, very small payments, $600 a month, et cetera. And one of the unique benefits of RV living is the flexibility. If you have a lot of money, you can put a lot of fuel in your gas tank and you can go far.

If you don't have a lot of money, you can park and wait until you have more. If you have a lot of money, you can stay in fancy parks. If you don't have a lot of money, you can stay in a Walmart parking lot. And so RVers have the unique ability of being able to expand their lifestyle and contract it as needed.

So when you read about these RVers who are living on $800 a month, $1,000 a month, $1,200 a month of social security, you see that when their engine blows up, they can recover from that. Because then for the next few months until they've replenished their emergency funds, they live super cheap.

You can apply that whether you live in an RV or not. Maintain spending flexibility. Avoid debt. Avoid contracts. Keep a creative mind. Think about how you can solve problems with less money. And be humble. Be willing to be humble. And number five, insure well. Insure well. Insurance is wonderful.

It's one of, in my opinion, one of the most marvelous inventions that we've come up with. Insurance is wonderful. It can take what could otherwise be a disaster, a major setback, and turn it into a simple speed bump. If you first do these other things, then you can afford the insurance payments.

And that financial tool will help to smooth so many things out in life that you don't experience the lows. So many people will go and they'll buy something like an expensive RV, but because the payments are so high, they don't insure it very well. And then something catastrophic happens, and they're left making payments on a vehicle that was destroyed.

If you buy a cheaper RV, or a cheaper car, or a cheaper house, or a cheaper motorcycle, or whatever, and you insure it well, you can afford it. Then if you have a total loss, it's not a huge problem. That's thankfully the case with even the truck that I have.

It's well insured. And so because it's well insured, I'm covered. We'll work things out with a quality insurance company. We'll make a fair deal, and either we'll fix the truck, or I'll buy another one. So insure well. If there's something that would keep you up at night because you can't afford to lose it, insure it.

Or if you're going into circumstances that you're not quite sure about, check into insurance. If you're going to go traveling and you want to wear your fancy ring, insure it. Just insure it for a year. That way if it gets stolen, it'll be restored to you. If you have some valuable stuff in your house, insure it.

If you have a vehicle, insure it. Many times we sit down and we try to figure out what's the cheapest thing that I can get. I've done that. I do the calculations. For example, with vehicle insurance, generally I want to have vehicles that if they were totally destroyed, it's not that big of a deal, I'll just buy another one.

And so usually buying liability only insurance can often make sense, especially if you're dealing with less costly vehicles. But price it the other way and then ask yourself, assume it was a total loss. Would I be freaked out? Would I be losing sleep? If the answer's yes, insure it.

Insure well. Think if you build these things over time, you can build a lifestyle of financial peace. You can enjoy that financial peace and I'm convinced that that financial peace will improve many other areas of your life. I've very rarely seen a marriage relationship that was difficult. I've rarely seen such a relationship improved by financial turmoil.

I've very rarely seen children who are going through difficult experiences in life, who are really struggling in something health-wise, physically, psychologically. I've very rarely seen those children have that experience improved by financial turmoil in their family. I've very rarely seen somebody whose personal life was difficult. They were experiencing depression.

They were struggling with confidence or struggling with a health issue. I have very rarely seen that circumstance improved by financial turmoil and catastrophe. If you say that's too obvious, well, consider again. You can't guarantee that you never face financial turmoil. You can't guarantee that you don't experience total loss, but you can protect against so many things and you can protect against the most likely ones.

So those are my five tips for you. It's been quite the adventure. We'll be on the road just as soon as we can. But one more comment. One of the things I've also learned to do is to make fewer commitments. We have intentionally not established a firm calendar schedule of all the places we're going to be because I knew there are too many things outside of my control.

I couldn't be there. I can't plan that far ahead. I can't say six months from now I'm going to be in California on this date for this particular event with my listening audience. And so even just in your own lifestyle, if you can pull back on some of those things, then you can deal with the bumps in the roads that come along.

That's enough for today. Number one, it's only money. It's not life or death. If you have money problems, they're problems, especially if they're over $10,000, they're problems, but you can solve them. Money problems in the grand scheme of things are not such a big deal compared to some other problems that you might have.

Number two, I'm going to be okay. You're going to be okay. And I'm going to be okay because I'm okay with very little. Cultivate contentment. Food and clothing? I'm set. Beyond that, everything extra, it's just extra. Number three, live within and preferably below your means. If you do that, you may trade in the fanciest rig.

You may trade in the most beautiful house on the block. What you gain is peace. If you value peace, give it a shot. Don't view yourself as being deprived because you have a simpler home or a smaller car. You're not deprived. You're blessed. You're in peace instead of a fancier thing.

Number four, seek to maintain spending flexibility. Develop your allergies towards contracts, towards fixed payments. Develop your allergy towards debt, towards things that will take away your flexibility, lock you in. Number five, insure well. If there's something that would keep you up at night, if you lost it, if it just disappeared, insure it and insure it well.

Cost a little bit of money up front, but if you don't have it, well, it's not the end of the world. Whereas, if you lose the thing, you'll be happy that you insured well. I'll be back with you soon. Over the next week or two, just a closing note, I very much have wanted to...

You've noticed that the schedule at Radical Personal Finance has been up and down, just doing the very best that I can. My hope is that most of my... As soon as we get out of here, I'll be able to stick to a more regular release of shows, more regular structuring.

I've got all kinds of things I want to do. I'm just doing the very best that I can and I'm thankful for you for sticking with me through this time of transition and I'm excited to come and see you out on the road. If you've written to me, if you've invited me to come visit you, please know I have every one of those.

I've just replied to almost none of those. So when I can, I will respond. Thank you all so much for listening and I'll be back with you soon. 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.

Fiji Airways has flights to Nadi starting at just $748 for light and just $798 for value. Discover your tropical dreams at FijiAirways.com. That's FijiAirways.com. From here to happy. Flying direct with Fiji Airways. (upbeat music)