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Today, I begin a five part series with some very short focused shows on some different approaches to housing that I hope might give you some creative inspiration to look at your own situation a little bit more thoughtfully. If you were to analyze the personal budgets of the average US American, or frankly, the average global citizen, as long as we're talking about a middle class or non-poverty stricken existence, the biggest expense that most of us incur is housing.

If you're dealing with the very lowest class, the most desperately poor, the biggest expense there is usually food. And the housing is extremely makeshift. Picture a shanty town with walls and cardboard walls and just a, if fortunate, a metal piece of roofing. And for the most poor of the world's, for the world's most poor, one of the biggest expenses is food just because they don't even have the money for housing.

But that's not the situation most likely that you're in or that I'm in. We're in a situation which housing is a big, big deal. And I think a lot about housing because I'm interested in so many different approaches. And I want to give you some ideas that I hope might help you to look at your situation and help to minimize your own housing costs.

There are many ways that you can change the structure and the cost of your housing. And I want to encourage you not to be the kind of person who spends all your day working to pay for a house that stays empty most of the time. I've interacted and frankly stayed in so many houses where the house was empty during the day because the owners of the house were spending their time going to work to pay for the house that they didn't use.

And so they got up early and they left the house before breakfast and the house was cold and hot and empty early in the morning. And they spent all day out of the house, but at the end of the day, they were so tired that instead of coming home and having the energy to actually use the house, they would go out to a restaurant and they would hire people at a restaurant to cook for them, coming home to an empty house, which was heated or cooled all day long for them.

And they basically used it as a bedroom. I've been in so many houses where there's so many different, there's so much space that's unused and it just, it hurts me. The efficient side of me hurts me because I want to see that stuff used. So here are some ideas that I hope you'll consider if any of them may be practical to you or to anyone you know.

The first idea is this. Is there a way that you could learn the skills necessary to construct for yourself an appropriate dwelling and eliminate the need to pay for an expensive dwelling? Years ago, I read an article in, I think it may have been Backwoods Home Magazine. I enjoy these Back to the Land magazines, Mother Earth News, Backwoods Home, things like that.

But years ago, I read an article and the writer of the article was talking about how they had spent time working at basic entry-level jobs in order to develop for themselves the skills to build their own housing. And they were comparing mathematically the value that they gained from doing that versus the value that they gained from just simply paying a retail cost for a house.

Now, I didn't sit down and create an elaborate spreadsheet to try to demonstrate this to you before today's show, but I do think it's very worth considering. I used to work in the construction trades when I was in high school. Primarily, I did some general construction. I worked on building a number of houses.

I was very fortunate and privileged that when I was younger, my parents built their own house. And the way that they approached that, one of the reasons they built their own house was so that we children could have a chance to engage with the actual building of that. So my dad contracted out the construction of the shell of the house, the walls, the roof, the foundation, et cetera, which is some of the more time-consuming parts.

But I was involved even as 10 years old, I was involved in many of the aspects of that construction project. I nailed a lot of the shingles on the roof. I pulled a lot of the wires under the help of, of course, my father who was doing the wiring on the house.

I observed the process of plumbing. I helped and did a little bit of labor in the framing of the walls. I watched the guys put up the drywall. Now I was limited, of course, due to my age. My older brothers did a lot more than I did, but I was very involved in the process.

I laid a lot of the floor. I refinished the floor. All of the way through, I was involved in the process. And so that exposure to construction gave me a great degree of personal confidence in my ability to tackle and do certain projects. When I was in middle school, I worked as a laborer on, again, doing some general carpentry, which was very useful, learning how to frame decks, frame roofs, frame walls, things like that.

And then also I labored for a summer as a helper for a tile setter. And so I spent the summer doing all the jobs that a helper does of mixing up mud and grouting and finishing and chipping up floors, et cetera. But I learned that I could do tile.

I could do these, learn these basic skills. And I've often thought what a value it would be for a young man or a young woman, especially during those high school years to have exposure to these certain trades. In hindsight, I could go back and I could see a 14 year old, a 15 year old, a 16 year old, a 17 year old, and if that 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 year old were to spend their time each summer working in a different part of the construction industry, just during the summers, they would gain so much skill and competence with regard to carpentry or plumbing or electrical work in order to be able to do it themselves.

When I was in college, I worked as a helper for somebody who was a master electrician, but was doing the work of putting an addition on their home. And I worked at every single stage of that project from digging the foundation. We dug it, we compacted it. We poured the cement and I gained access to every phase of that construction.

Here's what I learned. Construction is actually pretty simple. Now, when you're actually working in a trade, you can pick up so much knowledge quickly, much quicker than almost any other, than any other methodology. And you can just higher on as an entry level laborer and gain a huge degree of experience as I learned as a seventh grader working as a tile laborer, a helper.

I gained so much experience just in a couple of months of tile setting. So let's say that you're interacting with a 13 year old, a 14 year old, a 15 year old, and let's say that you don't just back into their summer employment by accident, but rather you work into it by design and you break down the major components of construction.

One might be general carpentry. Another might be plumbing, electrical work, perhaps some flooring, perhaps some roofing, perhaps some Finnish carpentry. And what if you had two or three or four summers or even better? What if you had multiple month periods for somebody who was homeschooled and they could use their mornings for their, their, their academic work and their afternoons for their physical work.

Think about how much a focused young person could learn. I'm convinced they could come out with a basic knowledge, a working knowledge of most construction techniques with a focused plan, like I've described. Even if they worked for free or they worked for 50% less wages, you know, right now to get hired on as a laborer on a construction crew, the going rate is about 15 bucks an hour, at least in most markets where I have seen.

I was just passing through and I have noticed, which by the way, if you're not employed right now and you want to be employed, you better get out there and get a job. Unemployment is so low. I see help wanted signs everywhere. And the starting wage for entry level unskilled work right now seems to be about 13, $14 an hour in the retail environment.

You go into the construction industry and it's higher. So 15 bucks an hour for an entry level helper. Maybe it's 12, maybe 13, your market may differ, but about 13, 14, 15 bucks an hour. Let's say that you hired on it less. Let's say you hired on it 10 because you were utterly unskilled, or let's say you're young and weaker than a strong adult would be, so you're not worth quite as much yet, but you could just learn and get paid to learn.

You could come out of that type of environment with a huge degree of competence in these basic skills. That alone would give you the skills to build your own housing. Now here's a second thing to consider. There are so many good books and instruction manuals available to you entirely for free at your local library on modern construction techniques.

There's so many good books on theory available for you that if you have a little bit of basic academic ability, you can work by day helping the electrician and study by night studying electrical theory. And in a couple of months of focused effort, you can attain your basic journeyman's level knowledge if you're academically competent.

Now you won't have the experience requirements to apply for the licensing, but you don't need that. You just need the knowledge and the theory, and you can do it relatively quickly if you are skilled in this area. Which brings me to the third thing, YouTube. The power of YouTube and the power of the instructional content for any person to pull out their phone, shoot high quality videos, show what they're doing and give instruction for free is changing so many people's lives.

From time to time, I come across these news stories and frequently it's somebody who's relatively unlikely, a single mother of three children who built her own house from watching YouTube. And I look at these things and I say, absolutely. How awesome is that? And it's true. It's possible. It's doable.

So why not you? Or why not your children? Are your children given over to that type of skillset? Do they have that competence with their hands? Do they seem to be able to function well in that environment? If you haven't put them into that environment, why not? Why not give them a chance, give them some exposure?

There's no reason at all why strong academics and strong physical manual skills shouldn't go together. Those things are perfectly compatible, but is that right for you or your children? Could you help a young person to develop those skills? Now, how would you actually apply this? Well, let's say that you develop those skills and you were able to work in these jobs and you were able to live cheap, hopefully with mom and dad, but you're able to live cheap and save your money, there's no reason in the world why a 14 year old, a 15 year old, a 16 year old shouldn't be able to put in three, four, five years of strong labor in a manual trade of some kind.

And then by the time they're 18, 19, 20 years old, have 40, 50, 60, $100,000 saved. I love the account, the story of Steve Maxwell, who I interviewed on the show and how he's worked with his children, where all of his children were able to save and pay for their first houses, buying them debt free before they were married.

I love that account. There's no reason why you can't do that. Now, if you've got 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, $80,000 saved by the time you're 18, 19, 20, 21 years old, let's say that you need to pull back to new work 30 hours a week, but you go ahead and put in another 30 to 40 hours a week on your own project over the course of one, two, three years, you can build for yourself quality housing.

And it doesn't have to be weird housing. It can be normal, conventional looking housing in normal, conventional neighborhoods. There's no reason why you can't go ahead and pull your own permits. There's no reason why you can't do those things yourself. Now let's say it takes you a couple of years to get it done.

That's fine. But I think it's entirely feasible that a motivated, diligent young person or older person for that matter, it's just harder when you gain more responsibility, it's harder to work cheaply so you can gain skill. But so this type of approach is I think more well suited for a young person, but there's no reason at all why a young person couldn't come out in their early twenties and construct their entire housing themselves and it'd be beautiful and functional, that skill set, those skills can be so valuable and you could build for yourself an entirely livable house.

It could be conventional or it could be unconventional. That's up to you, but you could build for yourself an entirely workable housing arrangement and do it without borrowing a dime. Do it very inexpensively by putting in your own labor and your own skill. Now, given the slower pace, if you start to add the skills of scrounging around for materials, of learning how to work with the things that are less expensive than just everything that is on the retail market, you can do it at a dramatically lower cost.

So I encourage you, give some thought to this approach, give some thought to these ideas and see if they might not be helpful for you or for a young person that you know. I know a whole lot of young people, 23 year olds, 25 year olds, 28 year olds, who would be a whole lot better off if they had dedicated their teens to this type of approach.

And instead of working a job that didn't give them physical skills or skills that could be built on to something else, instead of wasting their time doing things that didn't build skills as a young adult, when they have the time to work inexpensively, now a whole lot of them that would be better off following this type of plan.

So radical housing idea number one is this. Could you design the educational program for yourself to learn the skills in order to build your own house? I think you could, if you wanted to. Give it a thought, see if that's a helpful idea for you. Thank you for listening.

You've honored me with your time and attention, and I'm grateful for that. And I hope that I've effectively served you today with some ideas and strategies and tactics and techniques and tools that will help move you towards your goals. Before you go, three simple requests. One, if there's an idea that's been helpful to you in today's show, make a plan to take action on it.

Listening does lead to learning, but learning in and of itself doesn't automatically lead to a life change. It's action that leads to a life change. So take action. Two, take something that was helpful to you in today's show and share it with somebody that you care about. I'm depending on you to be a co-laborer with me in helping me to propagate the message that I'm seeking to share.

That helps the person that you are engaging with. And it also helps you because teaching others is one of the most effective ways for you to learn and for you to cement your learning. Three, if there's an idea that's been specifically helpful to you, and if you're gaining financial benefit from Radical Personal Finance, I'd be grateful if you'd consider paying me for this work voluntarily.

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