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That's FijiAirways.com. From here to happy. Flying direct with Fiji Airways. 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.

Today on the show I want to talk to you about how to harness the power of individual solutions so that you can have a more positive frame of mind, a more optimistic view of the future, and more power in the present to actually accomplish the change that you would like to see.

So, about 90 seconds of background. Over the last two weeks I have finished recording, outlining, and producing my newest course which is called How to Survive and Thrive During the Coming Economic Crisis. I'm really proud of it. It wound up being 13 hours and 3 minutes of very carefully edited and thought out content trying to answer all the questions that I could anticipate on how to survive and thrive during any coming economic crisis.

I laid out a raft of solutions that I'll put up against anybody else's solutions in the world as being effective and low cost, or at least relatively low cost, good effective insurance policies to put in place in your life to protect you against an economic crisis. And yet the whole time I did that I was struck by how simple and feasible my solutions are for the average person, and yet how utterly impossible any collective solution is for the average person.

And I see an epidemic of people who are increasingly committed to collective solutions being the only solution, and yet beating their head against the wall, and instead of finding peace and happiness and optimism and comfort, just finding frustration and anger and lashing out on all sides. And I want to help you avoid that if possible.

I'm convinced that if you look at almost any problem, you will find that the individual solutions to that problem are powerful, and yet the collective solutions to that problem are almost impossible. I want to use two examples just as my archetypes, because I can't think of two bigger, more discussed problems than this.

The first one is the economic debt crisis that I outlined in the past couple of shows. In exhaustive detail, I worked through the problem, I talked to you about what is at the root of the problem, I shared with you potential solutions and why those potential solutions might or might not work, and I laid out the situation.

And I was very clear that I view the problem of national debt as insoluble. It is insoluble. And I have a few ideas on how I think it will go, and time will tell. In fact, in the How to Survive and Thrive During the Coming Economic Crisis, I did a whole module on what I think will happen, which I didn't do here on the show publicly.

In the course, however, I did a whole module on here's what I think will happen in the coming economic crisis, because I don't think it's a doomsday scenario, but neither is it all rosy and good. The other example that I want to use is the discussion of climate change, global climate change.

And I thought about this a lot myself, and I had a listener of mine point this out as well, that basically these two problems face similar characteristics. They are massive, they are huge, they are long-running. The worst case scenario seems utterly abhorrent. And yet I would say that there are individual solutions to both of them, individual solutions that would lead to peace and prosperity, etc.

Now let's talk about those individual solutions so that you can understand, and then I'll give you some other examples. If you want to be prepared to survive and thrive an economic crisis, your solution is very simple. You disconnect yourself from the economic systems that may fail, to the highest degree possible.

You build resiliency and reserves into your own life and into your own lifestyle. You disconnect yourself from being completely controlled by the functions of the economy, and you create plans to go where things are better. That's the basic outline of the whole course, and I'm going to go into detail on all of those.

And the same thing I think should apply to something like global climate change. If you are really concerned about global climate change, I want to see you put your money where your mouth is. I don't want to, if you're concerned about the rise in sea levels, then don't buy a house by the ocean.

If you're concerned that the climate is going to become warm, don't live where it's already hot and it's just going to get hotter. Move where it's currently cold and we'll get more pleasant. If you're concerned that there will be massive swings, I think you need to plan for greater climate variability.

One of my favorite guys on this would be Ben Falk. I've had him on the show many hundreds of episodes ago. But one of the things that he does in all of his permaculture design work is he designs for varying climates. And so if he lives in, I don't remember what zone of climate, of agricultural production he lives in, but if you live in, say, zone seven, you should put plants in your property that would thrive in zone eight, and you should put plants in your property that would thrive in zone six.

And you should go ahead and plant your property now so that you have a suite of food-bearing plants that will thrive in different conditions. That way, if it's unusually cold, then your plants that are more well-suited for cold solutions will flourish more. If it's unusually warm, then your plants that are suited for more warm climates will flourish more.

And you want to build that resiliency into your life. I want to do that in financial planning. I'm not knowledgeable enough to do that with things you grow, but I can do that with financial planning. And you hear that again and again, build resiliency into your life so that you can stretch, that you can grow, so you can take advantage of opportunities, so you can be protected from things that are coming.

And so in many ways, I look at these solutions as very much—sorry, these problems as very much parallel. And what I look for on the climate perspective is, since I am incompetent to judge the argument, the scientific arguments, et cetera, I study them, I look at them, I'm open to various sides being right, but I often find there's so many assumptions that were built upon assumption, built on assumption, built on assumption, built on data.

It's so complex that you look at it, and it's very hard for a layperson like me to draw a conclusion. And so what I look at, I look and say, "Well, what would I do if I believed this, and what would I do if I didn't believe this?" And I try to align my actions that way.

And so I tell you as an individual, I'll know you're serious about climate change when I see you not owning waterfront property. In fact, I'll believe that businesses think that—know that they're serious about climate change when they start selling waterfront property, and when they start encouraging people to plant gardens instead of fertilizing with petroleum-based fertilizer, and when I see people talking about actual methods that individuals can do to lock up carbon in the ground by pulling it out of the atmosphere with good growth, et cetera.

And I don't want to destroy, simplify what is difficult, but the point is, I look for individual solutions. And when I see people advocating for individual solutions and not just advocating for collective systems of control, then I want to follow what they have to say. And the same thing applies to debt.

Now let me get back to areas where I know, and I'm a little more competent, which is money and debt. You can't solve the collective debt crisis. I can't solve the collective debt crisis. And I'm not going to waste much of any time talking about solutions or wrestling with that.

I'm not going to be out arguing for higher taxes or lower taxes or change this or change that. I'm not going to waste my time with that. What I'm going to do is I'm going to look at it and say, "What can I as an individual do? How can I teach other individuals to do what I see able to be done?" And exactly the same thing, I'm not going to waste my time dealing with big, giant climate arguments and arguing about taxing the whole world to try to make things better.

I'm going to look and say, "What do I see individuals do?" By the way, I would commend to you one piece of hope. If you are really struggling, if you, and I know many people are, where they, evidently this is an epidemic among young people, where you feel like there's no hope, there's no future, and people are talking about not having children.

It's the big latest thing about, "We're not going to have children because how can you have children when there's a climate crisis coming," etc. If you feel that way, I would beg you, go and educate yourself on what some people in the world are doing with regenerative agriculture. The video that disabused me of any concern about climatological future, years ago I found Jeff Lawton's book, sorry, his old video called "Greening the Desert." Jeff Lawton was a permaculture designer who was given a plot of land near the Dead Sea, which is just a totally destroyed plot of land.

He was given the task, "What can you do with this plot of land?" When you see the results that he got on a tiny little budget, and then you see the power that he has been able to, the things that he's been able to do over the past decade or two with very little money, it's life changing, it's world changing.

I would guess, although I'm not sure, I would guess that Lawton has major concerns about the future of the planet. Obviously he does. But yet the thing is, he doesn't spend, at least in any of my knowledge, he doesn't spend any time worrying about that stuff. He just focuses on solutions.

And that's what I would encourage you. If you're concerned about that, go and learn the solutions to it. Because if you can watch a man turn a destroyed piece of desert land with hardly any rainfall into a lush garden on a dime, it should give you some confidence that we can turn any desert of the world into an absolutely magnificent oasis given time, resources, and focus.

So I hope that gives you help. But I want to stay where I'm competent, which is especially with finance, not with that stuff. And just say this, individual solutions are available to you. Let's say you're concerned about wealth, and you're concerned about, insert this group of people you care about, that's not wealthy.

You probably can't do anything to help that giant group of people. But what you can do is you can get wealthy yourself. You can't get your preferred group to get wealthy, but you can become wealthy yourself. You can't control those people, but you can control yourself. And then if you control yourself, and you get wealthy, you can teach one person, and another person, and another person, and another person.

And this is going to be far more effective for you than any advocacy for big forced solutions on people. Just choose an individual solution, and then teach that individual solution to another person. The pathology of thinking that you can control other people, no matter how well-meaning you are, will lead you to insanity.

But you don't have to do that to make a change in the world. Just change yourself, and set an example for your neighbor. Set an example there. Collective solutions are always hard, but individual solutions are easy, or at least feasible. Interestingly, collective solutions rarely work, but individual solutions almost always work because the individuals have a stake in the game.

They're willing to change their actions if it's not working. Collective solutions often don't work just simply because there's no accountability. Somebody will come up with some solution, some government will fund it to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. It won't work, but they won't ever admit that it won't work, they'll just ask for more money.

But yet the individual looks at what's not working and says, "That didn't work, I'm going to change." As individuals, we can change on a dime. You don't have to depend on anyone else for your life decisions, just change yourself. Collective solutions will usually lead you to frustration, because you'll be frustrated, "Why don't these people see what I see?

Why don't those people do what I think they should do?" Whereas individual solutions will usually lead you to satisfaction and confidence, because you'll make the decisions that you think are right, you'll test the results of those decisions, if you like the results, you'll do more of it, and you'll grow increasingly confident.

So don't waste your time arguing for collective solutions, that means you'll probably fail, because you'll spend so much time and energy arguing for those things, you'll miss out on what's before you, on the simple things that you can do. Don't do it. Focus on your individual solutions. And I've talked about the debt crisis, you can put in place a strategy to survive and thrive in any coming economic crisis, you absolutely can.

In every crisis, there are people who not only hang on, meaning survive, there are people who get rich, because they're prepared for crisis. Now you can study what happened, you can study what they did, and you can do the same thing. There's not a 100% guarantee, obviously, just like there's not a 100% guarantee that any of us are on the earth tomorrow.

But there's a very strong guarantee, and you're going to have a lot more success if you make a plan for yourself and your family, than if you try to change the US federal government. With climate change, if you're concerned about climate change, make a plan. Figure out what you can do on your property to take carbon out of the atmosphere.

I have immense respect for so many people that I have found who are so productive, and you study what they have done and how they have made their land productive and how they've used grass and vegetation to take carbon out of the atmosphere and all these things. I have immense respect for them.

That is the thing to do. And then the same thing with people who drive big scale solutions, but pay attention to the people who move. If you're worried about it, move. Go where you're not going to be impacted, etc. And then there's so many other things, especially things that relate to finances.

For example, over the last few months in the United States, I've watched the political argument regarding paid maternity leave. There's a big argument that in the United States, championed by President Trump's daughter, Ivanka Trump, that the United States should move to do what many of the governments of the world do, which is to mandate longer time stamps of paid parental leave after the birth of a baby.

And then this also is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recently made news about how they'd changed their parental leave policy, or at least their maternal leave policy, from one year to six months and why they were doing that, etc. Well, this is, of course, of interest to me because my wife and I are having another baby, and it's a fascinating thing, of course, to be in that situation.

But I would just point out to you that you don't have to wait on a government law to try to force people to pay you for maternity leave. Just plan ahead and make a plan so that you can take time off. My wife has not had any working income since having a baby.

That was because we made a plan and we did it. And the future of our life did not depend upon my convincing tens of millions of US Americans to try to support me so that I can take their money and support my family. That's my job. Our decision was very simple.

We never spent the income that my wife earned when she was working and we were newly married. We never spent a dime of it. We lived in a $500 a month apartment. We saved like crazy. We learned how to be frugal. And because of that, when she came home and stopped working at an income-producing job and started working at a human-producing job, then we were able to have extended maternity leave without depending on other people.

You can do that, too. Every single thing. You can do that, too. You don't have to convince people to try to say, "Well, you should cancel my student loan debt." Cancel your own student loan debt. I've paid off my loans. You can pay off yours, too. Get other people to stop borrowing money for student loans.

I do that. You can do that, too. You don't have to come up with a coercive governmental solution and lobby for that, meanwhile putting your entire life on hold. There's no need for it. Just focus on an individual solution that you can do. You can do it. And you're going to be far more optimistic and far more confident in doing that.

And you'll have a much better go of convincing others to follow you if you lead by example than if you try to force others to do something that they may or may not want to do. Now, is there a place for collective action? Maybe. I'm open to it. I think there may be times and there may be places where you have to have collective action.

And I could make a list of specific issues where I think you do have to have collective action, where I think ultimately a collective solution is required. But what I would say is you will never get collective action to work until you have a long history of individuals who inspire other individuals.

Forcing people to do something does not work in the long run. Those convinced against their will are of the same opinion still. You can put a law on me, forcing something on me. But unless you convince me that it's the right thing, you're not going to get compliance from me.

And I think you look at that, if you look at at least the US American society, look at the US American culture, as people go nuts trying to force other people and stop, and they've stopped respecting our individual autonomy to run our own lives, run our own lives as we see fit and be responsible for the results.

And people try to step in and say, "Well, I'm going to take all these decisions for you." Nonsense. You're not making any progress. You're not winning any converts. So start with your individual action and recognize that you as an individual can put in place a plan that will provide you with almost any solution if you'll stop worrying about other people.

If you've got $150,000 of student loan debt and you're sick and tired of having that student loan debt, you will not have that student loan debt paid off faster because you go and join Senator Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign. It'd be much better for you to put the time in, go and get a couple extra jobs, live in your car, and pay off your student loan debt.

And a year or two years from now, you'll be out of debt, you'll be free. Meanwhile, you'll watch a whole bunch of other people utterly miserable with the fact that their preferred political candidate lost, or even if they won, with the fact that they can't get the Congress to go along, or they can't get the people to do that, or the people rise up and start tax protests or something like that, you'll be free because you step up and pay off your student loan debt.

If you want to have a baby and you want to have maternity leave for your baby, then sit down and make a plan to have that so that you can have maternity leave for your baby. Don't sit around and think, "Well, if we just elected the right person in office, and if Ivanka Trump could just convince President Trump to make this happen and we could just get the Congress to go along with it, then I could have a baby." It ain't gonna work.

Because you're... Let me just say practically on that issue, it's not gonna work because you're not gonna be hired. And you can sue all day long, but at the end of the day, you're not gonna be hired. If somebody is concerned about you bringing a whole bunch of additional costs because now they gotta pay for your maternity leave, not gonna work.

You're not gonna be hired. So now your job prospects are gonna go down even more. It's not gonna work. You cannot force people to do what you want them to do just because you want them to do it, just because you get together with a few tens of millions of other people.

But what you can do is you can put in place a plan where you can have extended maternity leave. That's doable. So you can on the one hand sit around and spend the next few years of your life arguing and frustrated about getting things to change, and at the end of those few years, you won't have a baby and nothing will have changed.

Or you can put a plan in place and say, "How do we trim our expenses? How do we increase our income? How do we have an extended maternity leave so that I can take care of my baby?" And a few years from now, have a baby, happy baby in your lap, and you can enjoy that, and you can go on with your life.

Climate change. Don't try to get people to change their ideas on climate change. Just set an example for them. Show people what they can do. And on this issue, I beg of you, if you are a strong, if you're strongly concerned with climate change, I have looked for the ideas that people are proffering to say, "Hey, here's what you can do as an individual." I have looked for them.

Do you know who I see doing the most of them? It's people who don't even think climate change is that big of a deal, for whatever reason. Now time will tell what the situation is, but if you'll focus on individual actions, then you'll be ready to take it on.

You won't have a house by the edge of the sea. You won't be in a hot place that's going to get hotter. You won't be in a place where hurricanes are going to impact you. Move to the Rocky Mountains. Move to Canada. Move to a place where you're going to be less susceptible to climate change.

And then I'll believe you, and I'll follow you, etc. The same thing with debt crisis, and many other issues. You and I are not going to solve the debt crisis. All we can do is sit back and watch what happens. Now I'm going to use my platform to try to talk about what I think should happen from time to time.

I think there's time in that, just like it's good for us to talk about issues and have good arguments and debates, etc. We need to work through those things. And there are things of collective import. But you're going to listen to me a whole lot more when you can see that I have done what needs to be done in order to be protected from that.

And I'm going to listen to you a whole lot more when I see that you take something seriously enough to take action. So that's the summary of what I want to share with you. Just recognize, when you face big problems, the collective solutions are hard, if not impossible. But the individual solutions are usually simpler, easier, or at least feasible.

So start with what's simple and easier and feasible and do that first, and then possibly move on to a collective solution. The collective solutions rarely work, because you're not sure which one will work. But the individual solutions almost always work, because you can adjust and change. Those collective solutions usually lead to frustration.

Whereas your individual solutions usually lead you to satisfaction and confidence. I want you to live a rich and meaningful life now. I want you to be inspired to live that life now and to build from a place of calm confidence. I want you to be in a strong position so that you can reach out and help the weak.

But in order to do that, you and I both, and I'm preaching to myself, you and I both have to largely, not necessarily entirely, but we have to largely walk away from trying to force other people to do what we think they should do and seek to lead by example, by fixing the problems in our own life with the best solutions that we can.

Then we may inspire a few of them to follow us. And if a few of us inspire a few of them, and a few of them follow and inspire a few more, in time the whole collective solution can be changed. But we don't start with the collective. Start with you and start with me.

If you're concerned personally about facing an economic crisis of some kind, be it caused by the US national debt or be it caused by a job layoff or whatever, I would invite you to come by RadicalPersonalFinance.com and take a look at my newest course. I am extremely proud of it.

It is really, really good. If you just come by RadicalPersonalFinance.com, click on store, sign up to buy the course. I have in that course dozens of ideas that could result in millions of dollars of profit. I've always struggled to try to profit in savings. I've always struggled to try to figure out how much of my stuff do I give away versus how much stuff do I sell.

And it's hard because I feel like since I've learned everything I've learned just by reading books and it's all out there, I almost feel like, "Well, I should just give it all away in a podcast and make it simple for people." But I've chosen to do a couple of things.

First, I'm focusing more and more of my time and attention on people who have specific questions and that means my students. So you'll notice, for example, if you were to go to RadicalPersonalFinance.com, I don't have a place for comments on the site. Now I might bring comments in the future, but comments are a very tiring thing because I want to answer everyone's questions and it's like, "How do I do that?" I can't make a collective solution, so I make an individual solution.

By putting all the comments and the discussion behind a paywall, behind the course for my students, then I can spend time on that and really feel good about my investing that time. So I would invite you to give that a shot. The other thing that I do in a course and that I can do is I can always be a little bit more vulnerable.

It's hard in the public sphere to say, "What am I going to put on the internet where anybody who wants to can grab a soundbite, etc." That's a little hard. But if I put it in a course, at least it takes the 99% of the people and just tosses them into the dust because most of the trolls and whatnot don't bother to actually pay for anything.

And so if you want to discuss with me something like that, come on by and try that course. I've had wonderful feedback so far on people who really like it. So far, there have been high rates of satisfaction. We'll see as students continue the curriculum. I hope that remains true.

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