Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a 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. Continuing on today with our radical housing series, today is idea number four.

The idea is this. Is there a way that you can get your housing to be provided for you by your employer in some form or another? Of course, there are many ways that this can be done, many different permutations of this idea, but it's a powerful way for you to dramatically lower your living expenses.

It's a very efficient way with regard to tax efficiency and expense efficiency for you to provide a basic need for yourself, and it can provide a foundation for you to grow your finances. Let's start with some obvious examples to kindle your creative thinking. One example would be something like the military.

One of the great benefits of joining a military organization is that your basic living needs are provided for you as part of your contract. If you were to join your country's military, they'll provide for you housing, they'll provide for you clothing, they'll provide for you food, they'll provide for you medical care, and they'll provide all these things for you as part of your contract.

Now of course, you also, in response, commit your entire life and literally your life, but you do get a good deal. So yes, your wages might not be the biggest wages as compared to other types of wages, but when you run the math on $30,000 wages with all of your expenses provided for you as compared to $50,000, but you're responsible for all of your expenses, you have a really neat opportunity.

But the military is not the only way this can happen. There are some jobs where you wind up with your housing as provided for you as part of your job. I met a guy in a, I was in a cigar shop years ago. I always enjoy hanging out in cigar shops.

I meet so many interesting people. So I was in a cigar shop and I start talking with this guy. And there are certain types of people that if you go in on the middle of a weekday at around 11 a.m., 10.30 a.m. into a cigar shop, the type of person that's there is either going to be, well, I've never met any financial losers.

I never met just broke people in cigar shops. They either are very wealthy and that's what they want to do, or they're retired, or they work a job that allows them this kind of life flexibility. And so I start talking with this guy who is sharing with me. And I, at the time I was a financial advisor, so I like to meet wealthy people in cigar shops and hopes that they would like to hire me to give them advice on how to keep their wealth and make it grow.

And we start talking and he had sold a trucking company. But the story that he shared with me was that he started when he was totally broke. And he started by just working at a company truck driver. He got a job and what he just negotiated was his ability to live in the truck.

And he drove a lot, but he lived in the truck and he didn't maintain any house. So he drove constantly, lived in the truck. All of his expenses were provided by his job, saved all his money, and then he bought his own truck. And then he started to buy another truck and he built his own trucking company and he expanded it out and took him a number of years.

And then his payoff plan at the end, he sold the trucking company and it was enough money for him to retire on the lump sum from the sale of the trucking company. Now don't be confused. He worked hard to make that happen. He sacrificed a lot, but a major component for him was the ability to eliminate housing expenses because of the fact that he lived in a truck.

Now if you want something a little bit different, just recognize that there are all kinds of jobs that provide housing as a part of their job. Whether you work on a big rig oil derrick in the middle of the ocean, or you work on a boat and you sleep on the boat, or perhaps you get a job such as an apartment manager and you manage a 50 unit apartment complex, but part of your compensation is the fact that you get to live in one of the apartments rent free.

Now there are so many other ways you can do this and you can do this in your own business. What about something like operating a bed and breakfast? Or what about where you own the house, you live in the house and you make your income from opening your house up to your guests?

I love staying in bed and breakfasts. I meet the most interesting people. It's such a wonderful place. I love to show hospitality to others. I enjoy cooking. I enjoy hosting people. I enjoy meeting people. It's the kind of thing that for the right personality could be really wonderful. You live in our ranch and you have some cabins out back and that's a different variation of a bed and breakfast.

Or perhaps you take that idea and you develop a service business. Perhaps you work as a live-in nurse or a live-in au pair or a live-in teacher or tutor or a live-in chauffeur or a live-in butler. These are all different just common jobs that provide for you, that where housing is provided for you as part of your employment compensation.

These things can be very, very efficient. Very efficient tax-wise, very efficient for you in terms of your lifestyle and they really can provide a pleasurable, pleasing lifestyle. So that's it. It's very simple. Look around and see is there a way that you can get your housing provided by your work, by your employer, by your job.

If there is, consider pursuing an opportunity like that. The opportunities are out there. You just got to look for them. Remember that just because you're doing something like this doesn't mean you can't also build wealth. Just because you're living as a live-in au pair or a live-in butler, that doesn't mean that you can't also develop for yourself a huge investment portfolio of houses that are all rented out.

Just means that you're satisfying your need for a place to live with your employment and you're doing it in a very efficient way. I think there's a lot of value in considering something like this. So look for it, see if there's an opportunity that would fit you and perhaps that will help you to earn more, spend less and have more money to invest.

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. Come by radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron and you can sign up there to support the show at whatever level you feel is right for you.

This is a voluntary support. That's my Patreon page. You can support me with a dollar a month, five dollars a month, ten dollars a month, any number that seems right to you. But if you're gaining financial benefit from this show, and if it's achieving financial results in your life, I'd be grateful for your financial support at radicalpersonalfinance.com/patron.

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