- Big Boyz Comedy Kings is coming to Yamaha Resort and Casino Saturday, December 9th with D.L. Hughley. - That sweater so tight, it look like a snap between the legs. - Cedric the Entertainer. - Once we stop running, I'll find out what it was we was running about. - And Paul Rodriguez.

- What is it about old Mexican men? They could be missing a leg, they still want to get into a fight. - Hosted by my man Eric Blake and a special performance by Mario. Big Boyz Comedy Kings, December 9th at Yamaha Resort and Casino. Tickets can be purchased at AXS.com.

This is a 21 and over event. 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, we pick up our Asset Protection Planning for Mere Mortals series.

Back to some technical financial planning in today's show. This is part 11 of the series wherein we discuss wage exemption planning. This episode will not be the last in this series, but this is the last of the exemptions that we need to cover. The concept behind this Asset Protection Planning for Mere Mortals series is to give ordinary people who are engaged in fairly ordinary lifestyles some information on how you can set yourself up to be protected, to have your assets protected in case you face some kind of significant legal threat.

And so we're dealing with the very basics. Basics number one is exemption planning. Today, we round out exemption planning. I think we'll talk a little bit about asset titling. We'll talk a little bit about some basic business structures. And I think I'll leave this series alone with those basics.

I'm not going to get into any advanced concepts, any trusts, any offshore planning, et cetera, in this particular series. But today, I want to talk about wage exemption planning. Now, wage exemption planning is one of those funny little ones because it's very different than some of the other things that we've talked about.

With all the other exemption planning ideas that we have discussed, we've talked about how do you protect an asset. But today, we're talking about how do you protect your income against wage garnishment. Well, why would your wages be garnished? Most of the reasons why your wages would be garnished are not related to some of the legal threats that we've largely focused on in this particular series.

It is the case that your wages could be garnished as a result of a judgment being entered against you in a court. You are sued by somebody. That person wins the lawsuit. You submit to the debtors examination, to your judgment creditors, and you don't have any money. And so they say, "Well, we've got this judgment against you.

You don't have any money. You don't have any assets that we can take." And so they can, in some circumstances, go ahead and say, "Well, we're going to garnish your wages." And wage garnishment simply means that some of your paycheck is going to be sent directly to your creditors rather than being given to you.

The way the process actually works is you lose the lawsuit, the judgment is entered against you, the person, the attorney who wins the lawsuit against you will take a copy of the court order to the local sheriff, and then the local sheriff will bring that to your employer. Your employer will then notify you that your wages are going to be garnished, and your employer will have the responsibility of withholding part of your wages, and they will send that money directly to your creditor.

So the idea is you'll be working, but somebody else will be receiving some or much of your paycheck. Most of the time, the reasons that wages are garnished are more related to things like child support or back taxes or sometimes things like student loans, because the pathway to wage garnishment is fairly direct for child support, student loans, and back taxes.

The tax agencies, they don't have to sue you. They don't have to go through the long process. And so those are each unique risks that in some cases can be simply avoided, unlike the major legal risks that we've talked about throughout this series. If you don't ever take out a student loan, you don't face the risk of your wages being garnished by a student loan company.

That's why I recommend not taking out student loans. They're extremely dangerous. There are much better ways to finance your educational expenses than student loans. Similarly, if you don't owe child support or you're not divorced, you don't owe child support, then your wages aren't going to be garnished. And then taxes, if you can keep up on your taxes, then you aren't going to have your wages garnished.

And wage garnishment seems to be more likely used many times by state tax agencies, not necessarily against the IRS. Now, I don't know that to be a fact. That's just my guess as I survey the information that comes through, comes past my eyeballs. So that's different than the legal risks that we've talked about, you're being sued and then having that court judgment.

So for those other risks, we have to do some other planning. For example, child support is very, very difficult. Many, many wages are subject, are garnished because of child support obligations. In fact, since the late '80s, all child support orders include an automatic wage withholding order. And so once that's in place, it makes it very easy for your wages to be garnished.

And in fact, there are actually higher limits in many states as to the amount of your pay that can be garnished if you have child support obligations as compared to just simply owing some other type of creditor. So it can be a real challenge. It's a real burden. The strategies that are effective for discharging your child support obligations almost all have to be done prior to the finalization of a divorce decree.

Because the government is deeply committed to making sure that child support gets paid, deeply, deeply committed. I mean, there's all kinds of crazy stuff. First of all, at the end result, there's all kinds of shaming things. Many states publish the names and photos of people who are behind on child support obligations to engage in public shaming operations.

Many states-- there are many people in prison for many people who simply haven't paid child support, and they're in prison because they're held in civil contempt of court. And so most of your strategies for child support obligations have to occur before the divorce decree. That's a subject for another day.

Never known if I want to do that show or not. But it doesn't help. It doesn't help with wage garnishment. Student loans are interesting, but they're fairly simple to get forward. If you will just talk to them and you'll keep it going, you can oftentimes get out of the student loan garnishment and taxing agencies.

You can deal with them. But what do you do if you do face wage garnishment? First, there are wage exemptions that are in place. And in fact, all states have some formula that discusses wage exemptions. Now, the states vary in terms of how much of the wages that they protect.

The federal wage garnishment exemptions limit the ability of a judgment creditor in their garnishment to these numbers. Either they can garnish the lesser of-- they can garnish the lesser of either 25% of your disposable earnings or your weekly disposable earnings less 30 times the federal minimum wage, which is currently $7.25 an hour.

So let's define the terms. What are your disposable earnings? Well, your disposable earnings are your gross pay minus taxes and mandatory deductions. Mandatory deductions is any deduction that your employer is legally required to withhold from your paycheck, things like Social Security and the federal, state, and local taxes. The mandatory deductions does not include any kind of savings.

It doesn't include your insurance contributions or your 401(k) contributions or anything that's not required by law. It's only those things that are required by law, mainly taxes and federal income taxes and employment taxes. So to figure out the numbers, you can first start by calculating what 30 times the federal minimum wage is, basically 30 hours of work at $7.25 per hour.

That number comes out to $217.50. If you make less than $217.50 per week, then your wages can't be garnished under the federal guidelines because you just make too little. So if you make a higher number-- so for example, let's say that you make $500 per week-- then either the garnisher can garnish the lesser of 25% of that number, which would be $125 if we just go with the percentage, or $282.50, which is $500, the weekly wages, minus that 30 times the minimum wage, $217.50.

So in that case, the creditor would be limited to the total, which was 25% would be $125 per week. That's how much that they could garnish. Now, there are other limits and things that are imposed depending on it. And you can look it up, the individual rules for your state.

Each state has their own individual limitations and rules. So you need to look that up and understand what they are for your state. But let's get right to the strategies for how do you cover your exempt wages. Well, the first strategy that you have is simply to move to a state that protects wages.

So just like with every other exemption that we have discussed, each state treats wages differently. And there, in this case, are a handful of states that either provide significant exemptions or they provide for no wage attachment whatsoever. Let's deal with the ones that are-- let's do them in alphabetical order.

In first place, we have Florida. So like with many other things, Florida has an excellent ability to protect wages if you can file as the head of a household. So if you can file as a head of household, a head of family, then Florida will not allow wage garnishment, which is extremely helpful.

The way that you qualify as a head of household is by providing more than one half of the support of another person. So it doesn't matter whether you are married, divorced, never married, widowed, anything, just living alone even. If you provide more than one half of the support for another person, even if that person doesn't live with you, then you can qualify as a head of household, a head of family, which is very, very helpful.

Because with that, all of your wages can be protected from wage garnishment. Now remember, way, way back in the series, I said one of the basic strategies to always keep in mind is move to Florida. And we've talked through again and again why. Because of Florida's generous provisions for their homestead laws, Florida's generous provisions for protecting 401(k)s, IRAs, Roth IRAs, college savings accounts, et cetera.

And now in this case, we kind of round out the reason why one of the things you should keep in mind is, well, move to Florida. Now the only place where Florida is weak when it comes to bankruptcy and creditor protection laws is with regard to personal property. Florida does not have generous personal property exemptions.

Now in this case, thankfully, Florida is not alone. There are three other states, at least, that I'm aware of, that don't allow wage attachment at all. And Florida only works if you can file as head of household. So if you are a single individual not providing support for at least 50% of the support for a dependent, then the Florida strategy in this case for wage exemption doesn't work.

But in your case, you should consider Pennsylvania, South Dakota, or-- sorry, South Carolina, not South Dakota. Pennsylvania, South Carolina, or Texas. Pennsylvania provides no wage attachment except for taxes and child support. So that can be helpful. South Carolina, in South Carolina, wage attachment is prohibited. And in Texas, wages cannot be attached or garnished except for child support.

Again, that's why I tried to point out to you, child support is a very, very challenging proposition. More than anything else that I'm aware of, it is just the states and the federal government are very, very serious about enforcing child support judgments. So the idea is, if you move to one of those states, there is a strong chance, at least that I'm aware of, there's a very strong chance that you can live in those states and that you can protect your income.

Now, the only thing that I'm aware of is I think that if you live in Texas, there's one lawsuit somewhere. If you live in Texas and yet your employer pays you from another state location, then in that case, you may still be subject to the claims of another state.

So just be careful about that, making sure that if you're going to live in Texas that you are actually getting your wages from Texas so that your creditor can't go to the state where your company is located and then file the wage garnishment there. So make sure that you're protected there.

So it's best if you're working in Florida, Texas, South Carolina, et cetera, make sure you're working for a company in there. But I want you to think about this. If wage garnishment is causing you major, major problems, if you can simply move to a state that protects those wages, you may be able to rebuild your life and put your life back together, which is the whole goal of some of these ideas.

As I try to deal with in episode two of this series where we talked about the ethics and the morality of this, I want you to pay your debts, debts that you are morally obligated to pay, I want you to pay those. And debts that you are legally obligated to pay, whether you are morally responsible or not, unless you are taking a moral stand by willfully not paying something that is legally imposed on you because the imposition of that debt is immoral, in general, you're going to need to pay the legal debts, because your life just becomes difficult if you don't pay them.

So you've got to pay the debts. You owe them morally for the debts that you're morally responsible for. And then legally, you generally need to clear them. The problem is, how do you fight? How do you make it happen? And sometimes, if you're just simply having all your money sucked out, your bank accounts are sucked dry, your income is sucked up, you can't rebuild.

And this is especially the case if you owe a lot of money. Example, if you owe $5,000, and you're working, and your wages are being garnished to the tune of $200 per month, well, I don't think it's worth it for you to move states over just a measly $200 a month wage garnishment.

Just let that sit there. And in a couple of years, you'll have that debt paid off. And once the debt is fully satisfied, the wage garnishment stops. And if you're just working a job and making money, then it probably just simply makes your life easy to have it go directly from your paycheck to the creditor.

It helps you not to accidentally spend the money. But that's very different than somebody who might owe a huge amount of money. Let's say that I have $100,000 judgment that is entered against me. Well, and let's say that I'm supporting a family, I've got financial responsibilities. How am I going to pay off $100,000 judgment just in a short amount of time with wage garnishment?

It's not going to happen. And so in that situation, I'm going to need to be doing something dramatic to generate the $100,000 so that I can pay off the debt that I own. Oh, and in those cases, if my wages are being consumed by supporting my family, and then my wages need to be available for me to invest the money and go for some big win where I can generate $100,000 of profit, it may be very, very burdensome for me to have that wage garnishment.

And in that case, moving to a state wherein my wages are protected could very well serve me and allow me to be protected so that I can invest the money into something that's going to grow. And then once it grows, then I can go ahead and simply pay off the debt in a lump sum.

So having your wages protected can be extremely important. That's the basic strategy here. And that's why it is helpful. If you think that if the wage garnishment is just a matter of fact, and it'll work out, and you'll have enough wages that you can live on, you'll have enough wages that you can handle the things that you need to handle, and then it'll clear off this creditor, probably just let the wage garnishment sit there until you can clear out the creditor.

But if it's burdensome to you, then you need these strategies in your back pocket. Now, if you don't want to move, or can't move, or just have decided not to move, you should look into the specific head of household exemptions for your specific state. Most states will have some kind of head of household exemption.

And sometimes, like I said, in Florida, it'll exempt 100% of your wages. In some states, it'll protect some larger amount, but not 100%. I know Missouri provides a 90% exemption, which means that no more than 10% of your disposable income will be garnished. And then some states, it's based upon a formula of an amount that is necessary for the care and support of your family.

Now, remember, you generally will need to file an exemption with the court. So when the garnishment is issued, you'll need to contest it in court and claim an exemption. And in general, you'll need to provide proof of your claims, proof of your dependents. You'll need to provide financial information about your expenses, et cetera, in order to get that document taken care of.

But you can protect that. Now, in thinking, I want you to notice a couple of-- as we move on to a couple of strategies, I want you to notice the importance of that word "wages." Wages. There could come a time that you're subject to a wage garnishment, and yet you face a situation where you've got to protect your income.

Maybe you're making a moral stand. You're choosing not to pay something that is immoral, but you still have to support your family and figure out how to keep on going. So in that situation, remember that word "wages." In general, if a state-- in my understanding, if a state protects wages, it does not care how much those wages are.

So what that means is there are potentially strategies where you could adjust the way that your income is earned so that you maximize your wages, and then you keep your wages as a separate account from your other assets so that you can maintain that money. Example would be this.

Let's say that I were facing a major scenario. Well, I run a business. And let's say that if I run a business, often I might want to, for the sake of tax efficiency, keep my wages relatively low and keep my profits of my business higher because that's a more tax-efficient way.

But what if I'm now subject to a wage garnishment? And what I find is that my wages are protected from the claims of my creditors. They're protected from garnishment. But my profits are not because as soon as I deposit the profits from my business in a bank account, that creditor can take their judgment that they've taken out against me.

They can take it to my bank, and they can have that money distributed out from my bank account. But if my wages are protected, if I have the ability to change my compensation structure and simply have a higher wage going to me, yes, I'll pay more taxes. I'll pay more employment taxes, et cetera.

I'll pay higher income taxes because I'm not taking out dividends. But I can protect those wages. And just like with almost everything else, the key here would be to segregate assets. So if I were facing a situation like this, and if I were facing a wage exemption fight, I would have a separate bank account that had no interest on it, non-interest-bearing bank account.

And I would exclusively deposit my wages in that account and nothing else, not a dime else, because I'm depending on the segregated account to provide me with the practical protection. Because my savings accounts are going to be wiped out by my creditor. Anything else that I have that's not an exempt account is going to be wiped out.

But if I can protect wages, and I can put those wages in a bank account and keep them separate, keep them identified as wages and not have them commingled with anything else, then I can protect that exemption. So you can use that term "wages" to your benefit. Another strategy to fight against a wage garnishment is simply this.

Don't earn wages. Instead, generate income in some other way. So make profits instead of wages. The wage garnishment structure really only works well as a collection tool for a creditor if you have a job and they can go to your employer and file that writ of garnishment with them.

That's the only place that it works. It doesn't work if you don't have an employer. It doesn't work if you don't earn wages. Let's say that somebody makes their living by buying and selling houses. Well, it's possible that if they own a house, that the creditor can try to impose on that house.

But there are other ways you could probably protect against that. The point is, if you can generate profit from the sale of an investment or profit from your business activity, then you don't have wages. Let's say that I go out, and my way of supporting myself and my family is by selling hot dogs.

And so I have a hot dog cart. And I go down on the street and I sell hot dogs all day. At the end of the day, I have profits. I have money that I've generated from my customers. There's no practical way for a creditor to take that profit that was generated by my selling hot dogs.

Or maybe I run a pressure cleaning business, and I go and pressure clean people's houses. People give me a check at the end of the day. I take that check. I ask them for cash and get cash instead of a check. If they don't want to do that, I take that check at the end of the day.

I only accept checks on local bank accounts. I go to the local bank. I cash the check at the bank. And now I have cash. There's no way in that transaction for a creditor to actually physically get their hands on that money. Now, they'll still have their judgment taken out against me.

But they're not going to be able to take my income. So if you can't protect your wages using a wage exemption, then don't earn wages. Stop earning wages. Make profits instead. And depending on how you structure it, you may have to readjust your business activities. For example, let's say that I were that real estate investor.

Let's say that now I would face a major risk if I were to purchase a house, because now I might have the risk of my creditor foreclosing on that house and trying to take that actual house that I purchased. That's not going to work. So now I might try to make all my income based on assignment fees, assigning contracts or something like that, until I can earn enough money from my real estate investment activities to generate enough profit that's not going to be subject to garnishment, generate enough profit that I can then take that profit and I can pay off the judgment.

So don't earn wages. Make profits. Remember also, when you are looking at things, that depending on how your income is coming in, it may or may not be even accessible in the first place. For example, debt is not income. Indebtedness is not income. And so if I need income, but I have an exempt asset that I can in debt, or I can take out a loan against, then now I can generate, I can free up money from that asset without actually selling the asset and running the risk of having that money made subject to the claims of my creditors.

So if I own a house, and the house is protected by the Homestead Exemption, if I take out a mortgage on the house, I can use that money for other things, but that's not income. And as long as I'm very careful to make sure that I never put that money into a bank account where the creditor can go to the bank and try to take it in that way, I can protect that money.

So consider that. As we also continue, remember that not all income is wages. And in fact, some income is by its nature exempt. There are forms of exempt income. So you can sometimes exempt wages. But in general, there are other forms of income that are just flat out statutorily exempt from the claims of creditors.

Social security income, very, very importantly. If you're receiving social security income, be it disability or be it retirement income, that income stream cannot be attached by the claims of your creditors. So this is one of the reasons why I'm teaching this stuff is because I've seen so many elderly people be abused by credit collectors when really they should tell the credit collector, listen, I'm judgment-proof.

You can't get a dime from me. All I have is social security income and a 401(k). You can't touch either of those things. Take a hike. So social security income is exempt from the claims of creditors. Disability income, be it whether it come from social security, whether it come from a private insurance policy, like a disability income insurance policy, or if it's some other form of disability payment, is generally exempt from the claims of creditors.

Most retirement income streams are exempt from the claims of creditors because they flow from an asset that is often protected. So if you're receiving a retirement distribution from a 401(k) payout, well, the 401(k) is exempt from the claims of creditors, so your income from that is also exempt. If you're receiving a retirement income from a defined benefit plan, let's say you are a municipal employee, a firefighter of some kind, and you're receiving a paycheck every month from your pension, because the pension is protected, it's an exempt asset, the pension payment is also an exempt asset.

Now, I would be very careful, again, to maintain the segregated account, and I would not commingle it. So if I were subject to some kind of, if I were subject to some kind of judgment, and I had a pension income coming in, I would have a separate account set up for that.

I would exclusively put the pension income in it, nothing else, not even any interest, I'd make it a non-interest bearing account, and then not make any payments out of the account, just simply make a transfer, write one check from that account over to my other checking account from time to time for my actual bill paying, but segregate the asset.

Similarly, if you are receiving child support payments, child support payments are an exempt income source, as is alimony. So if you are on the receiving end of child support payments or alimony income, those payments are not available for creditors, they are exempt. So you should additionally take the step of making sure that that is segregated to protect yourself, and to make sure that your other assets are protected.

So those are solutions so far. Now, what else can you do? Well, you can simply try to hide. You can try to protect and do your work in secret. Now, this is much easier done with business than it is with jobs. The problem with jobs is that there are extensive registry systems that track people.

The most onerous of these is the systems that work for people, that track parents who owe child support. So when there are large national and state-level databases that track parents who own child support, and there's massive amounts of information sharing between all the states and the federal government, the only place that you could really go would be to go abroad, which is why, if you owe more than $2,500 of child support, then the Department of State will revoke your passport.

And so you won't even be able to leave the state and the country in that situation, unless you can arrange to surreptitiously cross the border, unless you have a second passport established with another nation. So, but if you're in the United States, anytime you get a job, your new employer is required to report all new hires to their state's child support enforcement agency.

And then that agency forwards the information to the National Directory of New Hires, and then that National Directory of New Hires works to match up any names and social security numbers of anybody who owes child support. And then they go ahead and bring over the garnishment. That's why everything is tracked by your social security number.

When you have a child, your child is automatically associated, their social security number is associated with your social security numbers, with your spouse. That's why everything is tracked on you with your social security number. That's a major problem. Now, would it be possible for you to get a job that does not go in that system?

Of course. There are tons and tons of people who get jobs all day long where they're not with large employers who are following all of the database rules. The key is, if you get one of these jobs, millions of people every day, they take jobs, and they stick out their hand, they shake a hand with their employer, employer says show up at eight, they show up at eight, the end of the week, they get a check.

And no one else knows about it except the two of them. But when you're getting a job, the key is you better make sure that you cover your track so that even that job does not get exposed with the information. Even if you can successfully avoid the database systems, you will have to be on your guard to make sure that your banking transactions, your bank records, et cetera, don't demonstrate the fact that you have gotten this job, lest your creditors now be able to come, identify your employer, and find that.

And in many cases, it may even come down to learning how to successfully conceal your activities from a private investigator. Now, we get into some pretty tough stuff in that situation. If you are facing a creditor that is determined enough to hire a private investigator who will sit outside your house for day after day, figure out where you go, you can do some surveillance detection routes and cover your tracks and figure out how to drop a tail, check your car for GPS locator beacons and figure out how to make sure that you're not in the license plate databases and registries.

I mean, there are ways that could be done. It's not like it's impossible, but certainly that would require a higher level of dedication than many people would possess. At the very least, go back and listen to episode 503 of this podcast called "Tools and Principles to Help You Fight Nasty with Your Creditors and Win," so that you can at least cover your financial tracks.

Make sure that you never deposit employer checks into a bank account. Make sure that you minimize your banking footprint as much as possible. Deal in cash, cash your checks at the bank that they're drawn on, et cetera, so that you can minimize any kind of trail that is easily exploited by a creditor.

That will help you to be able to hang on to your money until you can figure out how to get it so that we can, so they can pay it back. So jobs are difficult, but not entirely insurmountable. Just by simply working in secret. Don't update your LinkedIn database and LinkedIn profile and tell everyone where you just got a new job if you don't want your creditor filing the writ of garnishment with that new employer.

Your better solution here, of course, would be business. So running some kind of business. And what I would recommend is in general, probably the simplest thing to do is to have a job, and with that job, you go ahead and have the garnishment, deal with that, but then run a weekend business, run a side hustle, run other businesses that will allow you to generate the income that you need to live on, and that will allow you to generate the income that you need to pay off the debt.

That's going to be a much more productive use of your time. If you maintain a job, so let's say that you can keep a job that's several days a week, the garnishment is there, your creditor's probably gonna leave you alone if they have a wage garnishment, they're receiving payments, they're not gonna be chasing you all the time.

But then spend your weekend, I don't know, build birdhouses and sell 'em at the green market, or whatever business things that you've come up with, spend your weekends and your off time doing that. Get money directly from your customers, and then that money from your customers can be used to invest, that money from your customers, you can stack it up until you can afford to pay off the judgment, or if you're not paying off the judgment, just keep it to yourself and keep it out of the banking system.

And there's a decent chance that as long as your wage garnishment is tricking along and they're getting payments, maybe you can just simply avoid having to submit to another debtors examination, and then you don't have to, you know, then once everything's paid off, you're good to go and restart.

So business is going to be your friend when it comes to generating income, where your creditor's fingers are not literally there taking money out of your wages. And then finally, I would just say, remember this, you can always stop wage garnishment with bankruptcy. So bankruptcy really works well to stop garnishments, and it may work well to just terminate even the claim, the judgment that's against you.

And that's why, as I've emphasized again and again through this series, you must think bankruptcy protection as you're thinking asset protection all along the way. You've got to keep those two things together. Now, I'm not competent enough to give advice as to any specific thing here, as far as if you can vacate your judgment that's taken out against you with a bankruptcy filing.

But I do know that you can stop the wage garnishment with bankruptcy. It'll stop it, you'll give a stay, just like with everything else with bankruptcy, you will have a stay on all collections, on all debt collections when you file for bankruptcy. And if you have positioned yourself and your assets effectively so that you focused on assets that are exempt in bankruptcy court, then there's a very decent chance that you may be able to use bankruptcy itself to terminate the judgment and still emerge the other side to rebuild.

And I think that's ultimately, you always have to keep that in mind. You should recognize that in the worst case scenario, you could be forced into an involuntary bankruptcy, plan accordingly, and you should always think in terms of a worst case scenario, how would I get out? Bankruptcy. Bankruptcy court is your friend.

Understand the rules of bankruptcy. Always imagine what would happen if you were forced to declare bankruptcy. Position and adjust your affairs so that you maximize that protection. And you'll have then the best case, the best protection ultimately against most threats, most creditor threats, and even against something as difficult as wage garnishment.

With these strategies, you should have enough information to protect your wages if you are subject to wage garnishment. I would ask you just, this was probably not you. The average listener of Radical Personal Finance is not concerned about wage garnishment. It is obviously a threat, but it's just not, I've never received a single email question from a listener on wage garnishment.

My biggest thing I want you to do is I want you to just think about this, and if you know somebody whose wages are being garnished, try to help them with some of the information. And again, in general, probably the best thing to do is just leave it alone and have their debts paid off and make a little income on the side to make up the difference and leave it alone.

But if you need this information, you need it. And so remember, you can maximize your head of household exemptions. You can move to a state that protects your wages. Florida, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Texas here are your friends. Make sure that you don't earn wages. So then maximize your wages or don't earn wages.

Make profits instead. Focus on making sure that you protect any exempt income that you have. Work privately, engage in private work for others, and/or engage in private business so that you can accumulate the assets to pay off the debt or to simply accumulate the assets if you're not willing to pay the debt, and then stop wage garnishment with a bankruptcy filing.

This will conclude the exemptions, but if you listen to this series, if you've maximized this, if you've understood, if you've researched your state laws, you have the information to protect your assets. This is incredibly valuable, and you've got to use it. I want to emphasize how important this is in the modern age.

You can use the laws to protect what you own, and you can do so legally and ethically and morally, and that's incredible. There are vast amounts of protection available for you if you will maximize that. So don't get caught 10 years from now just listening to everything that I've discussed in this show.

If you listen to it and don't do anything, you're sunk. 10 years from now. But if you will listen and simply adjust your affairs so that you maximize these exemptions that we've discussed in a way that makes sense, 10 years from now, if you ever need this stuff, you will have put it into place.

You cannot do this kind of planning last minute. There are a handful of techniques. I discussed briefly in the annuity show. If you want one of the few that I've ever been able to come across and research and find out, there are a handful of techniques available to you if you have never done any planning whatsoever and you're hit with a big bill.

You can leave. You can always leave the country that you're in. You can fly to the other side of the world, and unless you're a very high-profile criminal, in which case criminality makes basically all the stuff go out the window. Unless you're a very high-profile criminal, you can be fine just by leaving the country.

But you may not leave with any money if you didn't pre-position assets abroad, which you should take my How to Survive and Thrive During Economic Crisis course for the discussion on that. But if you were to simply position yourself and use these exempt assets to your benefit, you can be well-protected from the vast majority of conceivable risks.

A good financial defense plan is built in layers. So you have layer upon layer after layer. And think of it like watertight compartments. If this watertight compartment fails on a ship, okay, we've got others. We've got layers. And that's the basis of good asset protection planning. Even, I wasn't sure to go into it.

All right, this show's called Radical Personal Finance for a reason. Let me give you just one last strategy to deal with wage garnishment and wage exemptions. Just recognize the fact that no one can force you to work. Now, the only thing that doesn't work, where this doesn't work, is if you are dealing with child support obligations.

And if you didn't figure out how to do good planning before the divorce decree, and you're dealing with child support obligations, a judge will throw you in prison if you just prove yourself to be completely obstinate. And you will sit in prison as thousands and thousands of primarily men are today.

So this is dangerous with child support obligations. But for many other judgments and things, recognize this, no one can force you to work. And I think you should have to work. I think if a man doesn't work, I don't think he should eat. So I think you should work.

But no one can force you to work. While ago, I thought about doing a whole series of shows on how to live on welfare, and live well on welfare. And I went and started researching all of the states and all the welfare programs. I don't think I'm ever gonna do the show, 'cause it's just so hard for me, ethically, to do that.

But I'll tell you what, you're probably a pretty decently smart person. And if you ever had your back up against the wall, I would bet that you could probably take the same stick-to-itiveness that you've demonstrated in listening now to 41 minutes of this podcast, and probably listening to about 10 hours of other podcasts that I've done, and I would bet that you could probably figure out how to live extremely well, doing nothing but suckling at the government tit.

But that's about the only thing that you could do. If that was what you focused on, I bet you could do it. You're as smart as I am, you could probably do it. And so, one of the reasons why all this stuff flows together, why should you be skillful in order to live on low amounts of income, if you ever wanted to, if you ever had to?

Why should you be skillful about that? Well, you might need it someday. I could live like a king on 500 to $1,000 a month, especially if I were using all of the welfare programs that are available. I would follow every single rule and live extremely well. And you could too.

Now, you say, "Well, where am I gonna live?" Well, just recognize the sheer vast number of things that are available. I mean, let's say that I'm a homeless person. I would be spending my days, one of the things I've always wanted to do, I've always wanted to take a couple of months and go to Washington, D.C.

and do nothing but go to all the museums. I have never been able to spend enough time there to go to all the museums that I've wanted to. I would be a professional museum-goer. I would be a professional reader. I have thousands of pages of reading that I would love to do that I can't do.

The libraries are filled with this. Whenever I go to the library, I always talk to this bunch of homeless guys that use the library as their place. I got free internet connection in the library. The libraries aren't allowed to discriminate against me no matter how smelly I am. You take it and run with it.

But the point is this, you never have to earn wages. You can eat for free, you can sleep for free, you can be entertained for free. If you can have just a few hundred dollars here and there, which is from your 401k or whatever, you can do extremely well.

Most welfare programs are not means-tested. There's no requirement for you to fill out a questionnaire of what assets you have. There's generally only a requirement for you to fill out what income you have. And I would imagine that you could figure out a way to do a few things here and there and earn enough.

And that's basically your ultimate backstop, your ultimate fallback defense. If exemptions didn't work, if bankruptcy didn't work, well, you might not work either. Now, I don't like that line of argumentation because I believe that you must work. I believe that work is a moral duty that we face to support ourselves.

But I think that you can satisfy that moral duty to work without having to earn wages. I don't think you have to be paid for your work. You can give all your work away. And you can be paid with meals in the houses of people, and you can be paid with a bed.

And that stuff can't be foreclosed on. That stuff can't be garnished. And what I consider to be incredibly amazing about the modern era is I think that even if you were in that kind of situation, it doesn't mean that you wouldn't even be able to exercise influence. You know, I've got a long list of things I've always wanted to spend my time advocating for and whatnot.

It's just not feasible for me, given my responsibilities, to spend all my time being a political activist or something like that. Generally, guys like me don't make great political activists because we have responsibilities. Political activists tend to be people with fewer responsibilities. But the amazing thing about it is, if you had your back up against the wall, and all of a sudden you couldn't work for wages, you could figure out a way to live well, work for your support, you know, work for food and shelter.

And with the incredible ability and the cheapness that we have to access to publishing platforms, you could still get your message out. You could still do your activist work. You could have somebody give you a free computer, somebody donates their Wi-Fi password to you, you could still be incredibly productive even in something like that.

We live in an amazing time. I guess that's the point. We live in an amazing time. And so let's use it, and let's be diligent to make sure that you never have to wind up in that worst case scenario. But I think it's really valuable to test some of those things.

Last year, my family and I spent about six months traveling around the United States in an RV. We had a number of goals. One of my personal goals was I wanted to do that trip on the cheap. I've not talked as much about that trip as I probably should have.

But one of the things that I wanted to test is I always wanted to test full-time RV living. And I wanted to prove that it could be done on the cheap. Now, I don't know that, we weren't uncomfortable, but if I were doing it over again, I would spend more money than I did.

But I wanted to prove that you don't have to have a lot of money to go travel the country. You don't have to have a lot of money to buy a great RV. You don't have to have a lot of money. You don't need millions of dollars. And part of it is just always, well, if I were ever stripped of everything, I went bankrupt, well, at least I could do that.

And I know that I could be extremely happy, satisfied, and contented doing that. I know I could provide a warm, safe, loving environment for my children and support them. Even if I had no house, had no place to lay my head, I could do the RV thing, and you could too.

And there are dozens more strategies than that. So just always remember that. If you've got your back up against the wall, you're dealing with some kind of wage garnishment, you're dealing with something where just everything's stripped away from you, if you simplify your desires, and you can do well.

And if you just embrace a different lifestyle, if you've got an internet connection, you've got access to something that the kings of the world did not have 50 years ago. Never had as much unlimited options for entertainment, and influence, and education as anything else. So think about that. And if you're wealthy, like I am, where you don't think that that's ever realistic, at least from time to time, put yourself in situations where you're not, don't be a slave to comfort.

Toughen up, and then that way, figure out how you would live well, if you're in that situation. That is it for my wage exemption show, and that is it for the exemptions in this particular series. I would, as I close here, as I want to encourage you to go by my store at radicalpersonalfinance.com/store, I just take a moment and talk with you about my how to survive and thrive during the coming economic crisis course.

One of the most incredible benefits that you could do, and that course is very much focused on how to survive and thrive during a crisis, but I cover it from multiple ways, and I do a couple things pretty extensively. Number one, I talk a lot about how to protect yourself, how to set yourself up so that you can be protected in an economic crisis if the economy fails and you didn't leave.

But then the second thing I talk a lot about is how to leave and how to run away, with a special focus on how to run away internationally, how to leave a problem, because I'm convinced one of the more effective ways to deal with a massive crisis, unlikely, it's the least likely of the scenarios, but unlike a massive national-level crisis, is simply go from where things are bad and go to where they're good.

You see this happening all over the world right now, thousands and thousands and thousands of people, refugees fleeing from Syria, thousands of refugees fleeing from Venezuela, thousands of refugees fleeing from Nicaragua. Anytime that there's a major problem in a place, you see that people find life is untenable here.

But if they can just get from where things are simply unlivable to a functional place, they can figure it out again, even if people, if they have nothing. Last couple of days, I've been watching a friend of mine who's been doing some work in Venezuela, and I've seen some videos, I mean, you don't see this stuff on the news.

If you work hard, you can find some of it online, but just personal, my personal connections, looking at videos of people who have nothing, and it was just one video of a family, five children sleeping on the ground, on nothing more than a sheet laid out on the ground and a blanket over the seven of them, mom, dad, and five kids, and that's it, they got nothing.

And yet it was so bad for them in Venezuela that they left, they had to leave having nothing. And just as a father, it breaks your heart to just imagine the desperation of that mom and dad of how things are so bad that they're reduced to a sheet spread out on the ground, no pillows, no comfort, no thermo rest, no aerobed, a sheet spread on the dirt, and a family of seven curled up together with a blanket.

It's brutal. Now just imagine how bad life is for when you're gonna run when you've got that, crossing a border illegally, taking refuge in another place. Forgive me, it was just a big deal for me to have the personal contact and have that information, but just imagine how bad that is.

Now, back to where we all live, most of us, getting across an international border, if you can do it, can solve a lot of problems, and you can even solve problems in things like this. So if you've got that backup plan, if all your money, if all your assets are frozen because you've become, you're identified with the terrorists or you're identified with the hate group or whatever, and now all your stuff is frozen, and you're under, sometimes you gotta leave.

And so that's a big component of it. Now, those are radical things. The course is good, but it's not just focused on tin hat stuff, tin foil hat stuff. But come on by radicalpersonalfinance.com/store. Check out my How to Survive and Thrive During the Coming Economic Crisis course. I'm really proud of it.

It's really, really good. And I have heard nothing, I have yet to receive any negative feedback. Not a single one of my students, of many, many students, not a single one of my students has said anything negative about it. The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. So I invite you to come by radicalpersonalfinance.com/store and check out that resource.

I would, I thank you. Thank you for your business. - The LA Kings Holiday Pack is back. The perfect gift for the hockey fan in your life. A three game pack starts at just $159 and includes a holiday blanket. Buy today and you'll receive an additional game for free.

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