♪ California's top casino and entertainment destination is now your California to Vegas connection. Play at Yamaha Resort and Casino at San Manuel to earn points, rewards, and complimentary experiences for the iconic Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas. ♪ Two destinations, one loyalty card. Visit yamaha.com/palms to discover more. 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 am your host, and today we begin a discussion on how to find a wife. Today is part one, the preparation. This is a series that I've wanted to do or wanted to start for a long time. I don't intend to go day by day, nor am I going to neglect some of the other series that I've got running, but I've decided to do this one today because it'll be an important part of my own personal self-growth, or personal growth and improvement.

And it's a personal New Year's resolution of mine for the new year. I'll explain here as part of just a quick introduction, and then we'll get to the meat of a discussion of how to find a wife. One of the challenges that I have faced in being a broadcaster is in wanting to do things well.

And unfortunately, wanting to do things well often results in not getting anything done. This is not unique to me. This is probably common to both you and me, where we know what we'd like to do, and because we'd like to do something really, really well, well, we use that as our standard, and because it takes us a long time to do something really well, we often pull back in fear and do nothing.

And this is a personal character trait, a failing, a negative trait that has dogged my heels for the last few years with radical personal finance. I've worked hard to overcome it. I've made good progress, but I'm still not satisfied. I still see things happening again and again, where because I can't do something as well as I would like to, I pull back and don't get it done at all.

And so this series would be an example like that. I know of no subject that causes more conflict in the area of finances and money than marriage, marital relations, marriage problems, marriage philosophies, whether to enter into marriage or not be married. If you were to survey the average person, you will find that money fights are often a major component of their marriage, and their marriage is a major component of their money challenges.

And so it feels quite neglectful for me not to address the subject and give you some thoughts and some research, but because it's such a difficult subject where we all have such strong experiences that are emotionally vivid, and because we all have such strong ideas, depending on what personal background we come from, it's the kind of subject that I feel like needs to be dealt with very, very carefully.

And frankly, this is true of almost any subject. One of my personal ambitions in building Radical Personal Finance was to be accurate and somewhat authoritative in the topics that I would discuss. I was frustrated with inaccurate information being presented in the popular space of personal finance. And so I've always felt this desire to be academically accurate.

Unfortunately, it's hard to know everything. I make lots of mistakes. And in an effort to try to avoid making mistakes, I often mire myself in research. And in the way my brain works, my brain works in terms of claim, counterclaim, rebuttals, et cetera. I can think through the logic of most statements and think about all of the rebuttals.

And I've often had the desire to present things. And I often have this desire to do it comprehensively, to wit, even the explanation that I'm giving you right now, some people could bring into three sentences, but I have this desire, this impulse to try to communicate comprehensively what's happening.

And I'm doing it because I think it will help you to both understand me and to hopefully evade and learn how to overcome your own procrastination as well, as I am doing myself. Because of this desire to be complete, I often have this drive to create comprehensive information that is absolutely irrefutable.

I wanna make a case so strongly that my position is irrefutable because I know I'm gonna put this out there and then the internet's gonna judge and I want my content to be irrefutable. Well, unfortunately, that's not a good thing. Because first, of course, irrefutable content is often extremely lengthy.

And when you take a, say a 10 minute simple concept that if you just presented it simply, it would have broad appeal because it could be consumed in 10 minutes. And you expand it to 60 minutes to handle all of the rebuttals and all of the counter arguments, et cetera, it has much more limited appeal.

But more importantly, it's hard to do that. It's hard to come up with all of the rebuttals and it takes a lot of time. It takes time to develop the outlines. It takes time to make sure that your lists are exhaustive. And because of the enormity of certain topics, I have often found myself just stuck in the mud, not getting stuff done because it's simply too big.

And that must be fixed. That is not a good character trait. I will change that. I'm making it to you now as a public declaration to force myself out of the pride of putting myself in a situation to change it. It will change. And so my commitment is we begin this new year is to produce more, now some people would say produce more bad work, produce more cursory content, to just simply let fly with things that are not so comprehensive.

Because if this is not solved, if I don't change this, the entire project of radical personal finance will forever remain a fraction of what it could be if I don't solve that. And so you are gonna be hearing in the coming years, you're gonna be hearing much more straightforward, turn on the microphone and let it go, work.

That's not an excuse for mediocrity in terms of my own delivery. That's not an excuse for not being prepared. None of that, just simply that I'm going to be less focused on being comprehensive so that I can create more helpful content. We begin that in today's discussion. As I said, I don't know of anything that's more difficult in money than relationships, than marriage.

And it's hard to find anything that's more difficult in marriage than money. And so it seems important to talk about. But because there are so many variations, so many questions, so many things, I've never felt like I had that comprehensive encyclopedic answer, which obviously is a foolish thing to expect anyone to have.

And that's what's held me back. But I'm not gonna stop at this point. I'm gonna talk about it. And in this part of the series, I am specifically desiring to speak to young men. That is my goal. I'm picturing in this series, my son. Picturing him in his early to middle teenage years.

And I'm picturing giving him advice about finding a wife. So if you are a young listener, this series will help you. Because I personally believe that finding a good wife is one of the most important things that a young man can do. It's one of the most valuable things that a young man can engage in.

It's very rare when I find a happily married husband, it's very rare to find a man who will put money ahead of his wife. I personally am very fortunate that I found an excellent wife. I'm married to an excellent woman. I would quickly, if necessary, I would quickly sacrifice any financial amount of money that I needed to, to see to her wellbeing.

If she were sick, we would spend all our money to try to get her well, if that were necessary. And I think most men would do that. In fact, I think most men do that. But there are some caveats though. You'll notice, for example, that I've used the word excellent as an adjective describing my wife, an excellent wife.

Now, of course, those of you who are familiar with the scriptures, the Jewish and Christian scriptures in the Old Testament will quickly connote or quickly be reminded of the verse in Proverbs that uses that adjective, an excellent wife. There's a verse in the book of Proverbs 31 that says, "An excellent wife, who can find?

She is far more precious than jewels. The heart of her husband trusts in her and he will have no lack of gain." So for me personally, that statement about the fact that my wife is an extremely valuable asset to me is both an observational fact, me just simply observing my life, observing the lives of other people and recognizing it to be true.

And it's also a theological statement of faith. The Bible says it and so I affirm it, whether or not I fully understand it. But there are those modifiers. And I wanna focus on that for just a moment as a way of broaching this topic. Because if you just wanna go out and get married, you could do that pretty easily.

You can go out, if you're a dude, you can go out and you can find a girl who'll marry you. There are plenty of them out there. But it's harder to marry well. It's harder to find an excellent wife. And there is a lot of pre-work that needs to be done, a lot of preparation.

That particular verse in Proverbs says this, "An excellent wife, who can find?" Question mark. An excellent wife, who can find? And I like some of the various translations of this. So if you're not familiar with the concept of translations, the original scripture here is written in ancient Hebrew. And then modern English translations are translated in different ways by different people and different teams of translators.

But here are some of the various translations. A wife of noble character, who can find? She is worth far more than rubies. Who can find a virtuous and capable wife? She is more precious than rubies. Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies. Contemporary English version, which is a paraphrase, says this, "A truly good wife "is the most precious treasure a man can find." I like the good news translation.

It says this, "How hard it is to find a capable wife. "She is worth far more than jewels." Or another version, "Who can find a worthy woman?" Aramaic Bible in plain English says, "Who finds a diligent woman? "For she is precious beyond incomparable precious stones." Another translation, "Who can find a wife "with a strong character?

"She is worth far more than jewels." Or, "A woman of valor, who can find? "For her price is far above rubies." Who shall find a virtuous woman? For such a one is more valuable than precious stones. Who shall find a valiant woman? Far and from the uttermost coasts is the price of her.

A woman of worth, who doth find? Yay, far above rubies is her price. So you can see in all of these different translations that there is a modifier, an adjective, that modifies the word wife or woman. And that is a modifier of excellence. That is the hard thing, to find an excellent or worthy or noble or virtuous wife.

And it's that kind of wife that is more valuable than money. It's that kind of wife that is more valuable than jewels. Of course, it should be fairly self-evident that we can substitute money for jewels or rubies. These were old-fashioned expressions of money. Most, I mean, of course, they still have that reality of being expensive, costly things.

But the meaning, the poetic meaning is clear. An excellent wife is more valuable than money. That does not mean that a wife is more valuable than money, but an excellent wife is. And herein, we find the conflict of the modern age. How do we find an excellent wife? What is an excellent wife?

How would we define such a woman? How would we know such a woman if we met her? What would be the standards that we would hold up that we would judge her by to see if she was worth more than money? Just any wife, just any woman, a non-excellent wife is not more valuable than money.

A woman without virtue is not more valuable than rubies or jewels. In fact, your life will become a living hell. In fact, we could take one of my other favorite Proverbs and preach from it. From chapter 17 of the book of Proverbs, "Better is a dry morsel with quiet "than a house full of feasting with strife." Or, "Better a dry crust eaten in peace "than a house filled with feasting and conflict." So from that, we can see this obvious parallels.

Either you can find an excellent wife and her presence will be far more valuable than any money. She's worth more than rubies, than jewels, than money. But if you don't choose carefully, better a dry crust with peace and quiet, better a dry crust with peace and quiet than a house full of feasting with strife.

Or perhaps we could preach from Proverbs 25. Better to live, "It's better to live in a corner of the housetop "than in a house shared with a quarrelsome wife." On this one, I like the New Living translation. "It's better to live alone in the corner of an attic "than with a quarrelsome wife in a lovely home." You go back to the King James.

"It is better to dwell in the corner of the housetop "than with a brawling woman and in a wide house. "Better to live on the corner of a roof "than to share a house with a nagging wife." Anyway, you get the point. So we have this incredible parallel here.

We have this parallel of things being really valuable, of a good wife being really valuable, but a bad wife being one of the worst curses you can ever go through. Now, here's what I find very interesting, back to the original Bible verse that I started this series on, from Proverbs 31.

"An excellent wife, who can find? "She is far more precious than jewels. "The heart of her husband trusts in her, "and he will have no lack of gain." Again, the heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will have no lack of gain. Let me give you a couple of variations on this one.

The New Living, "Her husband can trust her, "and she will greatly enrich his life." Or, "The heart of her husband trusts in her, "and he will not lack anything good." Or, "Her husband depends on her, "and she never lets him down." Good News Translation, "Her husband puts his confidence in her, "and he will never be poor." Interesting, huh?

See the parallel here? The parallel between wealth, a woman, a virtuous and excellent wife, being more valuable than money, and yet that woman, because she is trustworthy and worthy of her husband's confidence, his ensuing prosperity. An excellent woman leads to prosperity. On the other hand, better to be poor than with a nagging or quarrelsome wife.

Better to live on the corner of a rooftop than with a nagging or quarrelsome wife. Now, these are all Bible verses. What I find interesting is to look at modern life and to see, can you see evidence born out in real life or in your own experience of these things?

My observation, my experience, I have an intense interest in the subject, I talk, I ask a lot of people when I have the chance about their own personal experiences. My own experience has born out this truth that I'm trying to draw, this dividing line between these two things. I'm thrilled to have been blessed with an excellent wife.

And because my wife is excellent, I enjoy a lot of gain. I enjoy a lot of growth. I enjoy a lot of riches, both monetary and otherwise. But man, I have sure known and seen some quarrelsome women and I would walk away in an instant and never want to be with them.

So when we talk about marriage, you better take this very, very carefully and seriously because if you choose well, there are a lot of blessings that come with it. If you don't choose well, there are a lot of curses that come with it and these curses are financial. Perhaps the most obvious expression of this would be if you look and study the lives of wealthy men, it would be very rare to find a wealthy man who did not have an excellent wife keeping his house together because it's not possible to simultaneously be the world's greatest businessman and the world's greatest father and the world's greatest husband and the world's greatest investor if you don't have help.

You can't do it. Now, I'm sure that there are many, of course, who try, who are forced into the position of being a single father and they dedicate themselves to it as best as they can, but it's tough, it's hard. And so there are just some practical realities that are important to recognize.

Now, I wanna give you some thoughts about preparation because the first thing I'm convinced that you have to do in order to find and attract an excellent wife is to be an excellent man, to be an excellent husband because an excellent wife will be very discerning in her tastes.

She'll be very careful in the decisions that she makes. And so you've got to be the kind of man that an excellent wife will be attracted to. And it would be best if you would become that kind of man at a very early age because you will have a much higher probability of being able to find and attract and marry an excellent wife if you will be an excellent man at an early age.

There are massive, massive benefits that come from marrying young, if you marry well. My wife and I married when we were both 26, which is about the average median age at which most people marry. We were right in line with the statistical norms. I wish I had married younger.

I think she wishes that too. I should ask her before putting those words in her mouth, but I wish I had married younger. Now, there is some statistical sociological data that indicates that marriages are shorter lived among younger people who marry than among people who marry when they are reaching a different stage of maturity, mid-20s, is where that statistical analysis changes.

You should be aware of that. I'm personally not distrustful of that data, but I'm distrustful of the causes involved in it. I don't wanna delve too deeply into that. You should be aware of that data, but I don't see any reason why my wife and I would not have been able to build a successful of a marriage if we had married younger.

And I've taken a poll of many of my friends, and most of them, at least the ones, this is just a very casual poll, casual sampling, just in personal communication, but most of us who are married well, most men I know who are married well make two comments. Number one, they are very happy to be married.

They're very happy to be married. If they married well. And most of the people that I hang out with have married well. And they're very happy to be married. Very rarely, we joke about this sometimes, me with some of my other married friends, and we say, "Would you ever wanna go back to being single?" And the answer is no, not a bit.

Nobody sits back and says, "Man, I wish I could go back to college "and get some more girls." None of us say that. All of us are thrilled and happy with married life if we're married well. The second thing has been an appreciation of marrying young. Again, lots of benefits.

I'll briefly mention more on that towards the end of this show in later in my outline. So I wanna talk about preparation. I'm gonna keep this simple and give you some specific suggestions for you as a younger man of how to prepare yourself to be the kind of man that would be attractive to an excellent wife.

Number one, be a man. Grow up and be a man. I'm not perfect on my language. I slip sometimes. But I work very diligently to never refer to people who are past the age of adolescence or who are in the age of adolescence or past it as kids. I slip up sometimes.

I concede that. It's hard. In a society where we call 20-year-olds kids, it's hard to not slip up. But I try very hard to never refer to people who are past, say, double digits, 10, 11, 12, 13, as anything other than young men and young women. And I do that intentionally because we live in a culture that praises the infantilization of men and women and wants to keep boys as boys until you're 35 years old, which is ridiculous.

Grow up and be a man. And that will happen as soon as you decide it will. You can either choose to continue to be an infant, a kid, into your 30s at this point or even longer, and society will pretty much bear with you, or you can choose to be a man.

I recommend that you choose to grow up and be a man. What does that mean? Well, there are many things, but specifically, embrace the concept of adulthood. Set a clear course for your life. Set goals for yourself and pursue them. Develop ambition. Develop a plan. And if you'll do that, if you'll set out goals, if you'll develop ambition and make a plan, that process of personal growth that you will need to go through in order to achieve your goals will, in time, bring you into a position of manhood.

I don't know of any bright line indicator that could be used to establish if somebody is a boy or a man. I have no use for chronological indicators, except as a general understanding. For example, I would not call a five-year-old boy a man, or would I necessarily call a 30-year-old a man, although I'd be much more inclined to call the 30-year-old a man than a five-year-old.

Has much more to do with indicators of behavior. Now, not the absurd and stupid indicators of behavior either. You're not a man if you get drunk. You're not a man if you've lost your virginity. You're not a man if you've learned how to swear like a sailor. There are other aspects of masculinity and manhood that are important.

But to keep things simple today, set out a clear course for your life and embrace the advances of life. It's not attractive to try to retain your status as an infant or as a boy. There is nothing attractive about a 20-year-old choosing not to grow up. Embrace the responsibility of life.

Lean your shoulder into it and work hard at it, and you'll start to enjoy the benefits that come with manhood. Now, here's what's interesting in the vein of attracting a woman. If you will be a man, if you'll act like a man, if you'll study masculinity, what does it mean to be a man and become one or start the process of becoming one?

If you'll set a clear course for your own life, your own personal goals, you'll have plenty of marriage prospects available to you if you want them. Now, you may not want them. You might choose to never marry. There are many men who make that choice, and I don't think it's a foolish choice.

It is better for you to never marry than to marry a non-excellent woman. It is much better for you to stay single than to marry a nagging woman. So it's better to never marry than to marry poorly, but I am convinced it's better to marry well than to not marry at all if you can find an excellent wife.

The great thing is if you will set out goals for your life, if you'll set out a course, if you'll develop ambition, that will suit you if you never marry. That will help you to enjoy a life of singleness as a single man, but it will also be extremely attractive to excellent women, and you will have plenty of marriage prospects.

Now, I can quit with that. If you'll take just the simple, undefined language that I used of be a man, grow up and be a man, and you'll develop what that means to you, that's enough, but I wanna give you another, a few more points. If you would like to develop, I'm sorry, if you would like to attract to you an excellent wife, it will help you to be rich.

It will also help you at least to be on your way to being rich. Wealth is extremely attractive to women. Wealth is extremely attractive to women. You don't need me to cite any data here. Just consider your own experience and look around. Wealth is extremely attractive to women. Now, here's what's neat about that.

Wealth can be developed. It can be achieved. It can be accomplished. That's what I talk about here all day, every day, and as part of becoming a man, you should naturally become wealthy. Part of being a man is being independent, providing for yourself. Well, what do you need to be independent and providing for yourself?

You need a source of income. You need a livelihood. You need a job. You need a business, and so if you get a job, you'll have income. If you start a business, you'll have income. Then part of being a man involves being prudent, being frugal, saving money. Well, what happens if you have a job and you save money, you start to actually be wealthy?

The great thing about this is it can be done in an age-appropriate way. No one expects a 15-year-old young man to have as much wealth as a 45-year-old man ought to have. So you can begin the process of becoming wealthy, and wealth is extremely attractive to women. Here's also what's cool, especially if you're starting young.

You don't actually have to currently be rich or be wealthy to be attractive, but if you are ambitious or if you have the character and the clarity of plan that you know you will be rich, that's attractive. See, when you're younger, a younger woman has different standards than an older woman does, and she should.

It would be absurd for a 20-year-old woman to state as one of her criteria that she's only willing to marry a man who is a millionaire. It would be a very vanishingly rare 20-year-old who was a millionaire of their own hand. So that would be absurd. But you can be a 20-year-old who's on your way to being a millionaire, and an excellent woman, an excellent wife, will be able to identify the character traits, and she'll be attracted to those character traits.

So if you're not rich, start with being ambitious. Be ambitious. Set goals. Have ambition. And a young woman, if you are young, a young woman who is serious and interested in marriage, she will identify those character traits, and they'll be attractive to her. I do believe at this point that a cautionary statement is warranted.

I think it's wise to be careful in how you display the symbols of wealth so that you send the right signals to the right women. Here, I think it's a major danger to focus just on flashy, ostentatious displays of wealth, because if you do that, you run the risk of attracting a woman who is interested in flashy, ostentatious displays of wealth.

Unfortunately, especially at a young age, flashy, ostentatious displays of wealth don't actually lead to becoming wealthy. Simple example would be an automobile. Of course, this is changing in a modern culture, but traditionally in US American culture, the car that you drive says a lot about you. But if you're 20 years old and you're driving a brand new, fancy leased car, and unless you have a massive income that you've already developed behind it, that's a good sign that you're not destined to be wealthy.

And the kind of woman who would be attractive to that kind of status indicator is also probably the kind of woman who will consume a whole lot of your income and keep you from being wealthy. And so since in order for you to actually become wealthy, frugality will be required, it would be good to be able to demonstrate that frugality and to choose a woman who is also frugal.

It is almost impossible, virtually impossible for you to out-earn a spendthrift wife. And so you better be careful that you don't attract one. So think carefully here, it's a good idea not to be too flashy. So be rich or be on your way to being rich because wealth is extremely attractive to women.

Focus on it, set out a course and work your plan. If that means that you need a job, get a job. If that means that you need an academic credential, go get a college degree. If that means you need to start a business, get after it. Get busy and build wealth.

And if you will do that, you will find your pool of prospects to be very broad. Next, be physically attractive. You must be physically attractive. Don't be sloppy, don't be weak, don't be small, don't be puny. Now there are some things you can control and some things you can't.

You can't control the size of your nose or the jut of your chin, but you can control if you're sloppily obese, you can control if you're weak and a wimp. So get busy and start becoming physically attractive. Men who are physically attractive are extremely attractive to women. So become physically attractive.

Control the things that you can control. And at the very least, don't be sloppy. Now here's what's neat. If you will work on becoming strong, fit, that will be helpful to you in your quest for wealth. Your physical health will make a big difference in your ability over time to earn an income.

Your physical health and energy and vitality and stamina will be a large determinant of how hard you can work, how long you can work, the type of energy that you can bring to your work interactions. And so your health will impact your wealth. And then in reverse, it's also true.

The more money you have, the more money you can spend on improving your health. And if you look at the expenditures of wealthy people, they usually will accumulate some status symbols over time, but then quickly they realize that investments in their own physical health are some of the most productive investments.

And so these two things are inextricably linked. You have to have and work on both of them. So become physically attractive, become strong. If you'll do that, they'll play off of one another. And so you can identify two of the most important, most attractive things to women, and they work off of each other.

I remind you, here's the cool thing. They're great for you personally, regardless of whether you ever marry or not. And so there's no downside to becoming wealthy. There's no downside to becoming strong and vibrant and healthy and physically attractive. There's no downside. Next, be a man of integrity and character.

Be a man of integrity and character. Be a virtuous man. Because an excellent wife is one who will be attracted to your character and moral virtue in addition to your wealth and your physical attractiveness. If you are wealthy and/or physically attractive, you can have as many women as you want.

But if you only have wealth and/or physical attractiveness, it will be very hard for you to attract an excellent wife. Because an excellent wife will also care about integrity and character. Doubt me, put it in reverse. If you are a promiscuous man and you find a woman who is rich, and/or you find a woman who is attractive, you will have a large temptation to indulge in a sexual relationship with that woman.

But it's very unlikely that you would wish to marry her exclusively based upon her wealth and/or her physical beauty. But if she is also a woman of integrity and character, and if you could put one factor of integrity and character together with either wealth and/or physical attractiveness, now you have a much brighter prospect.

So be a man of integrity and character because the kind of woman that you would want to marry will be attracted to your character and to your moral virtue. Why does this matter so much? Well, first, you have to attract an excellent wife, but it also matters because in order for you to respect yourself, you will need to be able to respect your integrity and your character.

If you put these things together, you will be a man who is brimming with confidence, personal self-confidence. Now, perhaps there's some possibility that you can develop personal self-confidence with some form of trickery. I don't personally buy it, though, and I think it's a very inefficient process. The best way to become self-confident is just to simply do things that would cause you to become self-confident, such as set goals and achieve them.

Do hard things well. Do things with character. Stand up for what's right in the midst of somebody that tells you to do what's wrong. Do hard things to be frugal. Develop self-confidence. When you have money, you'll be more confident. When you invest well, you'll gain confidence in your skills.

If you're physically attractive, you work hard, you push yourself physically, you'll be and develop more self-confidence. If you can respect yourself because of your integrity and your character, you'll be self-confidence. Now, what is incredibly appealing to women on a physical level, on a sexual level? Self-confidence. So you can develop confidence and self-confidence with all of these things together.

Now, at this point in time, if you have done these things, you've developed wealth. If you've laid out an ambitious project of goal setting for yourself and you're on the path to becoming wealthy, if you're not there yet, if you're physically attractive, you've developed your own personal strength, you've developed your own personal style, you've developed your own physical attractiveness, you're a person of a contagority, a man of character, and all of these things come together to make you confident you now have a choice to make.

To what end will you use your attractiveness to women? Because at this point, you will be attractive to many, many women. And you can either choose to pursue a wife or you can choose to pursue sexual indulgement without a wife. And there are two different paths here. Because an excellent wife that you would want to marry will be one who also would want you to maintain your own sexual purity.

The kind of woman you would actually want to marry is one who has maintained her own sexual purity. Now, why would you expect her to do that if you don't expect yourself to do that? So you need to make a commitment to maintain your sexual purity until marriage. That's a hard decision.

And that decision will only come out of your own personal, clear understanding of right and wrong, of your worldview, and of your own personal decision of the impact. You don't necessarily have to adopt my own worldview or my own convictions on the subject. To be clear, I believe that all sexual contact, contact of any kind should be reserved for a one-man, one-woman marriage relationship for life.

That's simple. You don't necessarily have to adopt that to see the wisdom of it. Meaning that I believe any sexual contact outside of a one-man, one-woman relationship, a marriage relationship for life is sin. It's a violation of God's law and it will be judged as sin by God. But you can see the wisdom of that even if you don't personally embrace my own understanding of the source of that wisdom.

Again, the kind of woman that you would actually want to marry is one who's maintained her own sexual purity. So if she's played the harlot for many years and then decided to settle down, which is very common among the way, in the way that women's sexual cycles work over the course of their lifetime, especially in our modern era, why would you be attracted to her?

It's very common, especially in the hyper-sexualized culture of the United States of America, that women will spend years behaving like a whore and then finally decide, "Okay, I want to find the good man and settle down." Now at that point in time, why would you want her? If you study marriage, you find that sexual promiscuity causes deep, deep problems for marriage.

Many of the significant interpersonal conflicts that men and women face in their marriage relationships, the things that drive them apart, the things that have them screaming at each other through the house, come from the sexual behavior that they've engaged in throughout their lifetime. Some of those scars are outside of the responsibility of the people involved.

Somebody's endured abuse when they were a child. That was outside of the area of responsibility for the person. But some of those are fully within the responsibility of the individual person. Now obviously for a woman, some of the most difficult issues involve children. If you're interested in a woman who has bastard children, you'll have a very difficult time in your marriage relationship integrating with them.

It's not impossible, but it's certainly difficult. You look at blended families and the challenges of those marriage relationships, and it's a lot easier if a woman that you're pursuing was never married, but still it's really, really tough. Not impossible, but difficult. And of course, that's preferable to the alternative, but it's super tough.

Now the alternative, if she's aborted her children, you'll have a very difficult time trusting her. It says a lot about a woman's character when she'll murder her own babies in order to further her own life and her own personal ambition and freedom. Is that the kind of mother you want for your children?

Thank God that repentance and forgiveness is possible, but if you're involved with a woman like that, you better see some strong fruit of repentance. Now, even if no children have ever entered the picture, you'll have strong problems if she's been a promiscuous woman. She'll have a hard time attaching to you emotionally.

There will be a long history of others that you're compared to, both good things and bad things, both sexually and relationally. So your very best possible outcome is for you to search for a woman who does not have a history of sexual and relational promiscuity. Now, how do you find that in the modern world?

Well, chances are that you'll have a better chance of that happening if she is young, which means that you also should be young. It's very hard to make cross-generational marriage relationships work. So your best chance of finding and attracting a young woman, who also is a woman of purity and virtue, will come when you're young.

And then, of course, she should have a clear intention about maintaining her personal virtue, which means that you would only qualify to come past her radar screen if you've maintained your own personal sexual virtue. Now, there are many more things that we could say. My point is, you will have to make a choice.

And I recommend to you that you make a choice to not choose to exercise your sexual attractiveness for your own personal gratification, because that will harm your chances of marrying well. (mouse clicking) That choice will have to be up to you, because if you do those other things that I've talked about, developing wealth, physical attractiveness, integrity and character, et cetera, if you do those things, you'll have huge options, you'll have huge attractiveness in the sexual marketplace.

But if you indulge widely in the sexual marketplace without focusing on marriage, you won't be able to find an excellent wife, because she will reject you. Not because you're not attractive, not because you're not rich, but because she wants the trifecta. Now, I just simply tell you this. You should, as always, judge anything that I have said on your own, analyze it and judge it.

But I'm in my mid-30s now, and I have watched the life course of many of my peers. I'm in a unique stage at this point in time where I should be, or I think I am, relatable still to young men. I might sound like a curmudgeon, but I don't look quite like a gray-haired, bearded curmudgeon.

I'm a red-haired, bearded curmudgeon. So I understand I've been there. I can talk to a 15-year-old and clearly understand and remember where I was at 15. I won't be able to do that when I'm 60. But I'm also in an interesting change, in an interesting phase where I have watched the US-American culture change drastically, and my lifetime is the time that it's happened in.

And I can watch my peers, my friends, who have made different choices, and I can see the clear outcome of their lives. If you want to marry well, you will need to be careful, and you will need to do things differently than most of your peers. If you don't wanna marry well, fine, do whatever you like.

But if you wanna marry well, you will need to do things differently. I come back, as promised, to a brief discussion of age. My hope is that young men listen to this show, because you have a major benefit if you marry young. Caution is warranted. I will caution you.

Separately, I'll talk about what to look for in a woman. Anticipate doing that. I'll share with you what I think is important for you to consider. I'll talk with you about how to find a woman. But at the end of the day, I am watching almost every one of my friends who is in their mid-30s who wants to be married have a very difficult time finding a suitable wife, having a very difficult time finding an excellent wife.

Now, there is plenty of sexual activity available to men in their 30s, but there's not a lot of excellent women who are not taken. And so one of your major competitive advantages that you can develop is if you as a young man develop these qualities, wealth or ambition, ambition and personal integrity, character on the way to wealth, putting in place the framework that will eventually lead to wealth in your life, physical attractiveness, developing physical strength, et cetera, and integrity and character, you'll have a very wide selection of suitable marriage candidates when you're young, very wide.

And because you will basically have the pick of the crop, so to speak, because you'll be an attractive man, then you can choose well and you can marry very discriminatingly well, which is incredibly helpful. But in order to do that, you'll have to have the clarity of mind. You'll have to have settled the question of whether you want to marry.

You'll have to have settled some of those things in advance and be much more self-aware than I was when I was 18. Much more self-aware than most of my friends were when we were 21. There are huge advantages to marrying young. Back to wealth. When you marry young, so many things in life are better, cheaper, you'll have more energy, and the adventure of life that you can go on with your wife is so richly fulfilling, so deeply fulfilling and rewarding.

And if you can do it without all of the extraneous baggage, friend, it is excellent. It's truly excellent. I did not have all of these qualities when I was younger. I was not rich when I was younger, made a ton of financial mistakes. Thankfully, I had a lot of the knowledge about those things and I had some good habits that were instilled into me by my parents, but I wasn't rich.

I wasn't particularly physically attractive. I wasn't particularly ugly, but I also wasn't particularly physically attractive. My strength was in the area of character and integrity, but I didn't do everything intentionally. And there was a phase in my life that I was determined to pursue the path of sexual hedonism rather than the path of marriage.

I thank God that I was insufferably terrible at it. I was a beta male through and through, and I was all the ladies' friends, and I was none of their sexual partners. Today, I am thankful. I literally view it as I was sovereignly protected, and I'm grateful for that.

Now, at the time, I wasn't particularly happy about it, but today I'm deeply grateful for that because my wife, she's the only woman in the world that I have ever slept with. And me, I'm the only man in the world that she's ever been with. And the richness and the peace in our relationship that has come from that.

We met when we were fairly young. We didn't marry until we were later. I wish I'd married older. I wish I'd married younger. But because so much of our experience of life was shared experience, we have almost no conflict in our marriage. We argue about English grammar. I jokingly say, but it's true, like we argue about English grammar.

So many of the conflicts that I observe in my friends' marriages and their lives, so many of the emotional insecurities that so many women have, so many of the, just the personal, again, personal insecurities that so many women have that reflect in contentious fights with their husbands. It is really, really tough.

It's so tough. And if you're looking to have a rich and rewarding and fulfilling life, you can avoid so many of those things. Now, just because a woman has emotional insecurities or just because she has a checkered past, that shouldn't be a disqualifying thing. Thank God, repentance is available.

The things of the past can be forgotten. I have friends who before, I have friends who, one of their wives, before she was a Christian, she just had the worst life. And thank God, God can change all those things. All those things can be forgiven. They can be cleared.

Christ's forgiveness is true, it's real, but it still brings challenges. You can work through them, but don't set out with the goal of saying, I'm gonna take on a challenging charity situation and work through it. Start with the very best. Start with the ideal. I just wanna give you that personal testimony that if you will be careful about how you marry, if you will avoid, if you'll choose, I mean, it sounds silly, but my wife and I, because both of us have a focus on the habits that lead to wealth, we don't argue about money.

With, and I'd say that about 98%. I mean, we still have our disagreements, but those disagreements are minor. And because they're so minor, it's easy for us to just ignore them. I would be much more aggressive about debt than my wife is. I'm the financial planner, she's not. Now, that's a good thing for me, that she doesn't wanna have any debt, because I probably would have been bankrupt if I weren't married to her, just 'cause of how easily exposed I am to the hardcore scenarios.

But those things are minor. It's not a big deal. So, but if you can avoid the conflicts, if you can avoid the problems, your life can be built together and you can build on a strong foundation. I don't have anything more to say other than to say, as someone who's not yet your grandfather, if you are a young man, I'm here to tell you that if you will choose an excellent wife, if you will choose an excellent wife, she will indeed be far more precious to you than money.

You will indeed be safely able to trust in her, absolute trust, and you will indeed have no lack of gain. Now, on the flip side, if you are stupid about this decision and you just marry somebody because they came along and you weren't careful in discerning and discriminating and thoughtful in your decision-making, well, you might be up on your house rooftop eating a crust of bread, frustrated at your nagging wife, and you won't be happy about that.

Choose carefully. In summary, if you will pursue these things, be a man, grow up and be a man, build wealth or be on the path to building wealth, become as physically attractive as your personal face and body will allow, be physically strong, be a man of integrity and character, all of these things, of course, leading to be a man of brimming confidence, you will be very attractive to women.

If you will maintain your personal sexual purity, you will be very attractive to an excellent woman who will not come with a train car of baggage, both emotional and physical, attached to her, and then you'll be able to marry well and build life together. You cannot think that you will fool an excellent woman.

You can't play a trick. You can't flash the credit card, drive around in the leased car, show up in the rented house and have her think that you're actually wealthy. An excellent woman will see right through that facade. You can't put on the self-tanner or whatever the style of the day is so that you look attractive but not actually be strong and attractive, and you can't pretend to be a man of integrity and character.

She'll see right through that 'cause she's an excellent woman. She will be a thoughtful and discriminating woman. Careful in her decisions. So the only chance to find and to marry an excellent wife is for you to be an excellent man. That, my friend, is your job. - With Kroger brand products from Ralph's, you can make all your favorite things this holiday season because Kroger brand's proven quality products come at exceptionally low prices.

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