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. My name is Joshua. I'm your host. And today we continue with part three of our five-part series called, "You Don't Have to Be Smart to Become Financially Independent, But You Can't Be Stupid." And today I want to talk to you about your investments.

Part three of my framework for wealth is invest wisely. By way of reminder, part one is increase income, two is decrease expenses, and three is invest wisely. You must invest wisely in order for you to become financially independent. But here's the great news. Wise investing is not that hard to do.

The information is easily available on how to be a decent investor. The information is relatively straightforward. All it requires is for you to be thoughtful and careful in your decision-making. Now the first thing that you'll need to consider when it comes to investing wisely is you need to consider what type of investments would be best for you.

There are some people who are very well-suited to investing in stocks. There are some people who are not well-suited to investing in stocks. Do a careful analysis and try to figure out what would be best for you. If you enjoy your job, you find your job to be meaningful and you're earning a sufficient level of income there, you like to spend your weekends down at the lake, and you don't have any other major business interests, you're not that interested in buying houses, then go and just invest money into mutual funds in your 401(k).

The fundamentals of stock investing are very simple. Buy some mutual funds. Choose low-cost mutual funds. Buy them and don't ever sell them. Basically it's as simple as this. If you pick an index fund in your 401(k), hopefully there's a good one with a broad base, something like a total stock market index fund is really sufficient.

Keep your expenses low and then don't open the statement so you're not tempted to sell it and just put money into it year after year, decade after decade, barring some world-changing calamity. You're probably going to be really rich in a couple of decades. You don't need anything more than that.

It's that simple. Now if you're not well-suited to stocks, you have personal reasons that you don't particularly care to invest in the stock market, I, as one financial advisor, I don't think you're stupid for that. But I do think that you should consider your approach and not just abstain from investing in stocks and have that automatically mean that you abstain from investing.

I think you should just choose another area of investment. Let's talk the other simplest area of investment, real estate. You don't have to be a genius to put together a reasonable real estate portfolio. Here's a simple suggestion. Buy a starter home when you're young and then when you need a bigger home, if you've decided, just keep the starter home, rent it out.

When your mother-in-law's cousin dies and you become aware that the house is available, go ahead and buy it. It's probably going to be fine. If you'll just put together a portfolio of three, four, five houses, you can manage them yourself and go ahead and finance them and then pay them off over time.

You can become financially independent and have a very stable investment portfolio, especially if you are the common man. The common man frequently has the skills or the network to fix the things that go wrong on a house and not get taken to the bank. I try to get so many of my friends who just don't seem to think about it to say, "Listen, just buy some houses." The average family, if they own five single family houses, would be financially independent beyond their wildest dreams.

Well, guess what? Buy a house, pay it off in 10 years. Buy another one, pay it off in 10 years. Buy another one, pay it off in 10 years. Whatever works for you. You can pay them off faster. But if you'll just buy some houses and let your tenants pay off the mortgages for you, you'll wind up financially independent.

We move on to the third category, some other type of investment, some business investment or some other class of assets that's not so common. If you want to buy steers and fatten them up and sell them at the market, go for it. That's a great investment if you know what you're doing.

If you want to buy cheap cars and fix them up and get a dealer's license and sell them, go for it. That's a great investment. If you want to buy old guns and fix them up and refinish them and sell them, go for it. That's a great investment. Don't let someone out there tell you that you can't look at an asset and say, "This is underutilized," and fix something up and sell it.

Use your money and go for it. Or with regard to your business, if you're running a business and you see that you have a lot of profit potential in that business, go for it. Invest in it. Just don't be stupid. Don't always put all your money in the business.

Don't always put everything on the line for it. Don't go deeply into debt. Just think about investing wisely. I get really annoyed when people just think there's only one way to invest. There are many ways to invest, but you've got to invest. If you're going to become financially independent, you've got to invest.

Here's what I've learned. A lot of people make stupid mistakes when it comes to investing. I've made my share of stupid mistakes and I'll probably make them again. You know how most stupid mistakes are fixed? Just give it a little bit of time. If you'll give some time to a stupid mistake, often the markets change.

Often you'll be able to right the wrong, fix the problem. Just give it time. I don't know how to give you more specific advice than that. You choose what's an appropriate avenue of investing for you. Many, many plans will work if you will work them consistently. That's the closing theme I want to mention to you.

When I was younger, I was super interested in investing in stocks. I reviewed all kinds of plans. I reviewed all kinds of strategies. I was always trying to figure out what's the best strategy. There might be the best strategy out there that somebody else more competent than me can know.

Here's what I concluded. Almost any strategy that is proven, that is not crazy, will work if you'll just do it consistently. But very rarely do you find a person who has the character and the tenacity just follow the strategy consistently. Same thing with real estate. Same thing with business.

You can get rich buying McDonald's and growing them. But it's rare to find somebody who's able to apply themselves to such a simple thing consistently. You can get rich buying a local Subway franchise or whatever franchise that you're interested in. You don't need a great business idea. You just need to come in and say, "This is my avenue for investment.

This is the business I've chosen. I'm going to follow the manual." So pick a strategy and do it consistently, reliably, diligently over time. And if you'll do that and stick with your investments and don't be stupid, you'll become wealthy. 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, $5 a month, $10 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. Are you ready to make your next pro basketball, football, hockey, concert, or live event unforgettable? Sweet Hop take your game to the next level.

Sweet Hop is an online marketplace curating the best premium tickets at stadiums, arenas, and amphitheaters nationwide. Sweet Hop's online marketplace makes it easy to browse and book the best seats. With no hidden fees and a 100% purchase guarantee, you can feel confident when you book your premium LA tickets with Sweet Hop.

Visit suitehop.com today.