♪ 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. It's Friday, and today that means Q&A.

♪ 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 it's Friday Q&A. We're going to begin with a short discussion of politics as it relates to the fiscal reality of the United States.

Thought it was interesting to watch the Democratic presidential debates. We'll brief comment on that. Also with a question on investing, and then from there we go to the phones and see what shows up. ♪ I hope that you are in line for an excellent weekend. It will be an excellent weekend.

It will be a holiday weekend next week in the United States. I know that's a big deal for many people. Hope you have wonderful plans in store for yourself. Each Friday whenever I can arrange it, I do a live Q&A show, and sometimes that means I take live call-ins.

Well, generally that's what a live Q&A show means. Sometimes, though, I take questions that have been written in, and sometimes live callers. And today it's going to be a mix, a little bit of current events, and a little bit of all of the above. We begin today with a quick comment on the presidential debates that I watched this last week, the Democratic candidate debates.

Don't worry, I'm not going to get too deep into the politics. I'm simply going to mention a couple of things, specifically as it relates to money, especially to the future of the finances of these United States. As long-time listeners know, I have been concerned for some time over the burgeoning government debt that we see in the United States, running basically a little under a trillion dollar deficit, and this is completely unprecedented.

It's not that a trillion dollar deficit is in and of itself unprecedented, but it's unprecedented to be running a trillion dollar deficit in a time of relative prosperity, where markets are generally doing well, employment is generally doing well, et cetera. For context, you should go back, if you haven't heard it, and listen to episodes 628 and 629 of Radical Personal Finance, called "Federal Debt, the Ticking Time Bomb "that No One is Willing to Diffuse," where I go over in detail the basic situation that we face in terms of governmental finances in the United States.

Now, in this series of shows, and even in my commentary today, I don't have any specific predictions, other than to point out that basically it's impossible that we will ever, one, pay off the federal, we can close deficits, but it's impossible that federal debt will ever go down or be paid off, and that the most optimistic scenarios that can be laid out basically require massive changes with regard to the way that the United States runs and structures its finances.

And it's possible, I don't think this is likely, but it's possible that if we were to see some kind of major changes in the next few years, it's possible that the long-term crises could be potentially avoided, or at least some say that that is the case. Now, in order to have some kind of change, you would need to, there needs to be a couple of things.

Either, number one, there needs to be massive decreases in governmental spending and/or massive increases in taxation. If that doesn't happen, and if we don't see people taking significant steps towards that end within the next few years, then you can be absolutely sure that the only potential outcome is bankruptcy.

Now, I'm 97% confident that that is the only potential outcome that I can see working, is basically bankruptcy of different kinds. And the question is not whether or not the US government will default on its various promises, but simply what that default will look like. And none of us know exactly what that default will look like.

We can't know. It'll probably look like many different things. The best example I always like to point to is what has happened to the Social Security Administration when it has gone bankrupt multiple times over the past few decades. Well, things change. Benefits are chopped, things change, and there are a couple of different options.

But back to that point of what if I'm wrong? I've always looked for that. Well, what if I'm wrong? What would be the evidence that I would expect to see if I am wrong? And in episodes 628 and 629 of the show, I talked about how the next few years are gonna make a big difference, or are gonna be very predictive.

And I said we need to watch the various people involved in governmental financing and see what they say and see what they do. Now, what is quite challenging is at the moment, it's very hard to find anybody who is lobbying for fiscal restraint. Basically, you have a political party in the United States that wants to spend massive amounts of money, and you have another political party that wants to spend massive amounts of money times seven.

And that's basically the difference. So I don't expect at this point really any fiscal restraint from the Republican Party. I don't expect any fiscal restraint from President Trump. That's never been something that he's interested in. It's not something that, it's basically something that the Republican Party has largely abandoned.

There are at least a few Republican politicians that kind of quietly say, "Well, we might have problems in the future," but they don't really talk about it. No one's out there holding the torch. Basically, at this point, I can't point to any prominent politician who is loudly discussing the need for fiscal restraint.

So on the Republican side, there doesn't seem to be any reason to expect things to change. What about the Democratic side? Well, I thought this was interesting, and I watched a little bit, and I read the transcripts of the Democratic debates of the 20 different presidential candidates who made the debate stage for the initial round of debates this week.

And for context, I'm recording and releasing this show on Friday, June 28, 2019. So if you're listening at a later date, it'd be interesting to see what has actually happened. Now, these debates are a difficult format, 20 people, a total of four hours of discussion. It's pretty much an impossible format.

But I thought it was interesting to see what is actually discussed. Well, first, it's very clear that if in the future, a Democrat were to be elected as president, it's very clear that that candidate, whoever they wind up being, is very likely to want to increase welfare programs of various kinds.

If you watched the debates or read about them or pay any attention to the political movement, there are a bunch of big, loud advocacy programs, things like government healthcare programs. Basically, I don't know of a Democratic presidential candidate who at this point in time is not pretty loudly advocating for a government-run healthcare program.

The majority of them have indicated that they would like to eliminate the private insurance marketplace in the United States. That's an interesting position to take, and we'll see what happens in the long term. But that's a massive increase in government spending. We'll see what happens with that. One of the other big issues that's very loudly talked about is programs like cancellation of student debt.

That's also an interesting issue to think about, but costs a lot of money. And there are a number of other minor programs. You have people talking about reparations, reparations to blacks. Or you have Andrew Yang talking about universal basic income and a couple other candidates hinting at various permutations of universal basic income.

But you have, I think it's fair to say, a fairly broad consensus among the Democratic candidates that there's going to be, we need more government programs. We need more new, big, expensive government programs. The most worrying, of course, is healthcare. Obamacare didn't work, was too expensive. And so now because Obamacare, I guess, didn't work, then now we need to replace it with government healthcare.

So that's the starting point. Now, what about the flip side? Is anybody talking about fiscal restraint? Well, I searched the transcripts to make sure that I had this right. And in four hours, two nights of discussion, I found two discussions and/or allusions to the federal debt and/or the deficit, one on each night.

The first one came on night one, and it was in an exchange with candidate Amy Klobuchar. And when talking about immigration, she was being questioned about immigration and her answer. I'll just read her answer. Guthrie was asking the question. Guthrie says this. He wants to no longer have it be a crime to illegally cross the border.

Do you support that? Do you think it should be a civil offense only? And if so, do you worry about potentially incentivizing people to come here? Klobuchar responds, immigrants, they do not diminish America. They are in America, and I'm happy to look at his proposal, but I do think you wanna make sure that you have provisions in place that allow you to go after traffickers and allow you to go after people who are violating the law.

What I really think we need to do, what I really think we need to step back and talk about is the economic imperative here, and that is that 70 of our Fortune 500 companies are headed up by people that came from other countries. 25% of our US Nobel laureates were born in other countries.

We have a situation right now where we need workers in our fields and in our factories. We need them to start small businesses. We need their ideas, and this president has literally gone backwards at a time where our economy needs immigrants. And so my proposal is to look at that 2013 bill that passed the Senate with Republican support to upgrade that bill to make it as good as possible and get it done.

It brings the debt down by $158 billion. That was the extent of the discussion on night one was that one single allusion in Amy Klobuchar to a bill from evidently 2013 that allegedly brings the debt down by $158 billion. I have no idea what that proposal was from 2013.

I'm not interested to go and research it at this point, but just without commenting on the proposal or what's even in it, the number is a joke. And that's the thing you need to remember. In an era where we're running almost a trillion dollars of deficit, $158 billion isn't even relevant in terms of the deficit, let alone the debt.

And so assuming that she was accurate with her statements, I don't know if she was talking about bringing the deficit down by $158 billion or lowering the national debt by $158 billion. It's just a joke. There's no relevance here to the long-term problem whatsoever. That was the only reference or allusion I could find to the discussion in night one of the debates.

Well, what about night two? The first time I could find where, or the first and only thing I could find in night two where national debt was discussed or governmental debt was discussed was when candidate Kamala Harris was asked a direct question as to whether Democrats have a responsibility to talk about how they will pay for ambitious new spending programs.

And I'll read it to you. Debate moderator Guthrie asks a question. Says, "Senator Harrison, sorry, Senator Harris, "there's a lot of talk in this primary "about new government benefits, "such as student loan cancellation, "free college, healthcare, and more. "Do you think that Democrats have a responsibility "to explain how they will pay "for every proposal they make along those lines?" Harris responds, "Well, let me tell you something.

"I hear that question, but where was that question "when the Republicans and Donald Trump passed a tax bill "that benefits the top 1% "and the biggest corporations in this country "contributing at least $1 trillion to the debt of America, "which middle-class families will pay for "one way or another.

"Working families need support and need to be lifted up. "And frankly, this economy is not working or working people." I assume she meant for working people. "For too long, the rules have been written "in the favor of the people who have the most "and not in favor of the people who work the most, "which is why I am proposing that we change the tax code "so for every family that is making "less than $100,000 per year, "they will receive a tax credit "that they can collect up to $500 a month, "which will make all the difference "between those families being able to get "through the end of the month with dignity "and was support or not.

"And on day one, I will repeal that tax bill "that benefits the top 1% "and the biggest corporations in America." And that was the extent of the discussion for night two of the debate. Now, first, of course, a president cannot repeal a tax bill by executive order. Such a move would require the involvement of Congress to change the tax code, but that's relatively insignificant.

It's important to know that, but it's relatively insignificant for my purposes. The first part of her answer was certainly true, but it was just basic whataboutism. The idea is, well, since no one is pressing President Trump or the Republicans on their spending, especially with this giant new tax bill that wasn't offset with spending cuts, why should the Democrats have to talk about the subject?

Well, certainly the criticism is accurate. Any fair-minded person would have to acknowledge that the Republicans are not doing a great job driving the governmental fiscal situation. But that's just whataboutism in politics. The second part of the answer is interesting because not only, basically, she winds up spending more money in what she's proposing.

Basically, as I understand it, she's proposing something like a $500 a month UBI of sorts for any family earning less than $100,000. And although it's not UBI, it's a tax credit, but then she's trying to offset it with increased taxes on the 1% and corporations, is the quote of what she said.

Now, this kind of proposal is not remotely serious with the actual facts. That's what's so troublesome. It's just simply not at all dealing squarely with how desperate the situation is with regard to the overall fiscal situation in the United States. Let me read to you just a quick excerpt from the article that I discussed where in episode 628 and 629 that put the size of the problem into context.

Now, remember, the entire article that I discussed, which was Brian Riedel's comprehensive federal budget plan to avert a debt crisis, his proposal, which was carefully calculated out, didn't actually solve any problem as far as didn't result in a decrease of debt, didn't result in a decrease of deficit, basically just potentially forestalled an absolute crisis by freezing the deficit at 95% of GDP.

And when he was talking about liberal fantasies, he talked about conservative fantasies and liberal fantasies, talked about what a fantasy the idea is that you can just simply just tax the rich. And I'll read you a couple of paragraphs. Just tax the rich. Liberal advocates often vastly overstate the degree to which upper income tax increases can finance the ever-expanding government.

In the first place, the United States already has the most progressive tax code in the OECD, even adjusting for differences in income inequality. And setting aside the moral questions that would be raised by the government seizing the vast majority of any family's income, basic math shows that large tax increases on high income Americans cannot close most of the long-term budget deficit.

Start with an extreme proposition, a 100% tax rate on all income over $500,000. Result, this would raise barely more than 5% of GDP, at least for year one. After that, one needs a heroic, if not absurd, projection that this tax would have no effect on working or investment. Next, try a slightly more realistic doubling of the top 35% and 37% tax brackets to 70% and 74%.

Result, this would raise only approximately 1.6% of GDP. And even that figure ignores all revenues lost to the economic effects of 85% marginal tax rates when including state and payroll taxes on work or investment as well as tax avoidance and evasion. And he goes on and talks about this, one more about corporate taxes.

Nor can corporate tax hikes close much of the gap. America's total corporate tax revenues are generally in line with other developed nations. Although modest reforms may be on the table, major changes, such as a 10-point rate increase, would raise less than 0.5% of GDP, while giving more companies an incentive to relocate abroad.

And he goes on. The point is that there's no, these numbers, these proposals, they're nowhere near relevant to what could actually happen in terms of the amount of money that could be collected. It sounds good as a line in a debate, but it doesn't give anything more than that.

It panders to this idea, this fantasy, but it's not actually relevant math in any way whatsoever. Those are the only two things I could find in the debate on the Democratic side. Now, I wanna be fully, I wanna concede the point that one debate like this is not necessarily in and of itself indicative of everything that can happen in a larger context.

The political season is still young. There are a lot of things that will happen in the political season in the months to come. But watch and see if there's any discussion or nod towards the actual fiscal situation in the United States. That's extremely important. So we'll see what happens as time goes on, but watch and see.

At the moment, I don't expect anything good to come. I don't see any reason why President Trump or the Republican Party will all of a sudden become the party of fiscal conservatism, and I don't see any indications that the Democratic Party is going to become fiscally conservative in any way either.

And if that's the case, assuming that's the case, a couple years from now, when after the presidential election, we'll be into another administration, I don't see any change in the expenditures of the US government in coming years. So we are in uncharted waters, and it will be interesting to see what winds up happening.

Let's watch it together, but let's keep an eye on it. As far as I'm concerned, there's a good reason at this point in time to be paying very careful attention and planning for the worst, which is ultimately in the coming decades, the long-term bankruptcy of the US federal government.

We begin in Maryland. Welcome to Radical Personal Finance. How can I serve you today? - Hi, Josh, a long time fan of yours. I've been listening to your podcast for quite a little while. And so I'm calling today because I just have some question about on a financial planning side, I just wanted to ask.

And I mean, I'm currently around 31, 33 in range and make a reasonable income, not six figure income. And I have a little bit over like 200, 300, thousand dollars in assets. And I'm kind of just trying to figure it out how to design my life so that I can live the life that I want to live at the same time while trying to achieve financial independence without stressing too much about the numbers.

- Okay. So tell me more. - In which area would you like to learn a little bit more? - What would it, let's just start with a question. Let's assume that you had today, say five to $10,000 a month of income coming in from your investment portfolio. You didn't have to work.

What would you do with your life? - I think I would try to organize, try to organize more events around personal finance, try to do a little bit more financial coaching, do a help, I mean, as I understand it from previous podcasts that you have already been putting out there, like that industry, it's not necessarily money generating because a lot of people don't really care about finances too much.

But so for me, if money is no issue, I would still probably want to do that, try to bring awareness to, that they should care about their finances and they should, and I'm teaching in finances. - Are you currently working in the financial industry in any way? - I'm currently, I'm a financial analyst, but I crunch number, you know, I review number, analyze number for companies.

I have a background in finance and accounting, but I do not work in the financial service industry because for the reason why you leave the industry, because the people that tend to use the service or the financial planners generally tend to go after the people that probably don't necessarily need the help too much anyway, if that makes sense.

I mean, that mostly higher net worth. My goal, serve the, probably the middle class families that might not be served, but be served now. If that makes sense. - Right, so let me clarify my opinion on the subject just to make sure that I'm accurately understood because I don't fully agree with the way that you characterized my opinion.

So I'll clarify it and then we can talk about some solutions for you. Number one, I do not believe that it's not possible to serve the lower class or the middle class when it comes to financial advice. That is not an accurate understanding of what I believe. I do believe it's possible to serve the lower class and the middle class with good financial advice.

I don't believe it's possible to do that with any kind of personal coaching model where you're working one-on-one, where you are sitting at a coffee shop, helping somebody with their finances and they make $30,000 a year, but they're willing to take out their checkbook and write you a couple hundred dollar check.

It can't be done in that way. So what are the models where I think it can be done? Number one, I think it can be done in education if you're going from one to many. There are many good financial coaches and educators who have made a living and made a fortune helping the lower and middle class, but the only sustainable way that can be accomplished is in the context of a one to many relationship.

You can sell a stadium full of tickets. You could sell a stadium worth of tickets to the lower and middle class at $20 a pop and have a $200,000 day for you if you can find a way to market to the lower and middle class. The best example here, Dave Ramsey does this.

Many other financial educators do this. You can do this in many niches. You can do it in a religious niche. You can do it in an investing niche. You can do it in many ways. Many real estate investors have made a fortune selling 20, 30, $40 tickets to a real estate seminar to somebody who is in the lower and middle class.

So you can do it that way. Another way that it can be done is where your payment that you're receiving for your services is related to the sale of a product. So the best example here would be selling something like life insurance. I used to sell life insurance policies.

I sold a lot of term life insurance to lower and middle class families who really needed it. And as long as I can make my income from a commission, I could give as an accompaniment to the sale of that life insurance product, I could give some useful and helpful financial advice to somebody who ordinarily wouldn't pay for it.

If I sold a simple term life insurance policy, let's say I sold a policy at $40 a month, million dollars a term life insurance to a young kind of just getting started family, lower or middle class family, $40 a month, that means the annual premiums are $480. And so let's call it $500 for easier math.

Depending on the life insurance company, the commission rate that I would earn on the sale of that life insurance policy would be anywhere from 50 to 120% of the first year's commission, which means I could make an income of somewhere between 250 and $550 for that sale. Now, it's not that hard to sell term life insurance policies to lower and middle class income people.

And as long as I can make three to $500 on the sale, then I can afford to do that. It's a little hard at those rates because you have to go through 10 potential buyers to wind up selling to one. And so it's not as simple for anyone who's never been in a business like that, it's not as simple as saying, I just make $500 for a one hour meeting.

No, it's a $500 commission over the course of say, three hours of meetings with somebody by the time you go through all the different stages of the meeting process. And that $500 of commission has to also compensate you for the nine other people that you talk to but didn't wind up buying from you.

So, but the point is you can afford to do it if you can sell life insurance, or if you can sell mortgages, or if you can sell something. Those are two very good business models where you can make a living working with the lower class and middle class people, either on a one to many approach, selling books, selling courses, selling seminars, selling education, selling a radio show, selling a podcast, you can do it on selling a blog, right?

There are many bloggers who are making a living helping people who are in the lower or middle class. There are many people on YouTube that are helping people do it, but it has to be a one to many model because poor people and middle class people are not used to spending money on good financial advice.

Now, if you're gonna do a one to one model and you're going to give financial advice or do coaching, the only people that are gonna be willing to pull out a checkbook or willing to pull out cash are gonna be people who are affluent. So if somebody's thinking about, where am I gonna make my car payment versus where am I, maybe I should think to talk to somebody about my future, the average person is gonna make their car payment 'cause that's the upfront problem.

And so that's where, in my opinion, all of the coaching models break down if you're aiming it towards lower or middle income people. They're just on the whole not willing to pay the money for hourly consulting fees. I do a little bit of hourly consulting from time to time.

I don't advertise it, it's not a major thing, but when people email me, I say, sure, I'll do it. I charge 300 bucks an hour for people who wanna do that and I charge by the minute, which makes it a tremendous deal. That is the best deal in the world.

I should double or triple my rates. I have never received an inquiry by, I shouldn't have said never. I can't remember ever receiving, if I've received one, it's one or possibly one or two. I can't remember receiving an inquiry from somebody about coaching or advice if that person didn't make at least in excess of six figures.

And it's much more common that the average person that writes to me is a multimillionaire. So that's the problem. I don't see any way to solve it. So that's my opinion of kind of the financial coaching model is simply that you can't do it one-on-one with poor people. If you think that you're gonna go out and do budget coaching with people who are in debt, they're not gonna pay.

You can write a book and sell it for $10 and make a lot of money if you can effectively market it, but you're not gonna do it with a coaching model. Does that help? - Yes, absolutely. - Okay. - Thank you. - So here's my answer to your question of financial independence.

You have two to $300,000. Are you married? Do you have children? - Single. - Single. So as a single man with a two to $300,000 net worth, there is no life decision that you cannot pursue at this point in time. You're in your early 30s and you have a lot of money.

You are already in the top few percent. I don't know if it's the 3%, the 4%, but you're within the top at least 5%. Maybe, I don't know. I should check these brackets so I can say this accurately. But you're in the top few percent of the American society in terms of wealth.

And if you have an income that's a little less than six figures, you can expect your wealth to continue massively. So at this point in time, there's nothing that you couldn't do if you chose to. There's no job that you couldn't go and prepare for, even if it required massive amounts of retraining, or even if it required you to go to school to spend money on education or certification.

There's nothing you couldn't pursue there. In addition, there's hardly any fun thing that you couldn't do. You could buy a truck and drive all around the world. You could buy a sailboat and sail the Caribbean. There's almost nothing you can't do. So at this point, you should be thinking like somebody who is financially free, and you should be seeking to optimize your future as best you can see right now.

So if that means that if you had $5,000 to $10,000 a month coming in per month and you would do financial coaching, then work on a plan to start moving in that direction. You do have to solve the investment side of things, but you can solve that in a number of ways.

But you need to be moving your career in the direction of what you would be doing, and then think about how you would make money from that. That's my simplest answer of how to think like somebody who is financially independent while you reach that fuller level of being able to live off of your investment income.

But you're already financially free, in my opinion. - Thank you for the encouragement, and thank you for the, yeah, I mean, thank you for the assessment of my current situation. So my question is, how should I get started? I have gone through Financial Peace University. I can try to be a facilitator.

And in my opinion, outside of a church and potentially a library, that's not very many places, like public places where you don't, where there's like a low-cost way of potentially hosting class on, I know I'm getting into the nuts and bolts here, and of getting started. How would, I guess, how would you go about it in terms of an actual plan, if I were to pursue that path?

- So if I went broke today, and I wanted to start over, and I had no platform, and I had nothing set up, and I were facing a problem like that, and I was saying, you know what, I really would like to teach people about money in a way that I could make a living on it and share some of the things that I have learned.

If I wanna, and if my goal were to reach the, reach the not-yet-wealthy, then I have to, I'm gonna begin with the presupposition that the not-yet-wealthy are not gonna pay money for my class. And I just think that's accurate. I hate it, I hate that it is that way.

I just, in all my experience, that has been the case. There are plenty of books about money in your local library, there are plenty of books in your local bookstore. Poor people very rarely go and pursue those things. So I gotta figure out who's gonna pay me. So I'm gonna look at it and say, where's my paycheck gonna come from?

My answer to that is going to be a corporation, a not-for-profit entity, it's like some kind of community organization, or possibly, like you said, possibly something like a church organization. And I would try to find some way where those organizations can host me and pay me so that I can afford to go and give a talk that their people would come to.

So if you were to look at your town that's around, that's near where you are, you'll find that there are dozens and thousands of businesses in your town, wherever you live. And those thousands of businesses, probably depending on the type of business, from time to time do something like a lunch and learn.

They come with good education. And so what I would do is I would try to find some interesting hook that would be really relevant to the people in my community or in a certain industry. I would research and think through some kind of strategy, and I would market that to the corporation.

And I would charge them, say, $500 to come in, give a lunch and learn. I would position it with the fact that, hey, I'm not selling any financial products, I don't have any insurance sales, et cetera, but I do have this curriculum. I would develop a curriculum, something that I thought was really gonna help them.

I would pull together some of the research that shows that employees who are more financially, who are more financially stable are better employees, et cetera, and I would market that and figure out how to market that to corporations. You could do the same things with some kind of local not-for-profit entities.

So if you wanted to help high school students from poor families, then you've gotta go and figure out how to get sponsored by the non-profit organizations that are already working in that community, and you gotta develop a program of something that's really, really useful there. So that's the best I got, that's what I would do, and that's how I would do it locally.

I don't see any other way that it could be done profitably enough to keep you in the business. But I would say don't despise online. The competition is thick online, but the best way to reach the people is probably gonna be online with some interesting and unique hook. And I'm increasingly convinced that almost any person who's open and transparent and yet who has an interesting story can find a niche of people.

So whatever that niche is that you would like to work in, the tighter the niche, the better, and it can still be done online. So that's how I would do it. - Okay, well, thank you very much for all your help. - Yeah, my pleasure. - Keep, go ahead, I'll finish.

Just keep working at it, because I do love the thought of people being teachers. I think that is super, super valuable, but I do wanna be realistic about the challenges. We go now to Portland, Oregon. Welcome to the show, how can I serve you today? - Hi, thanks for doing this.

I think it's a great platform. I really enjoyed your episode on moving out of the country, and I wanted to know if any more content in that regard was coming out. - Repeat, I couldn't quite understand. You've enjoyed my episode on what topic? - On moving outside of the country.

- Moving outside of the country. Well, certainly, I mean, I don't really, there are two reasons, so I'm sure I'll do more on it. In fact, I have a show scheduled for the next few days, specifically about the cost of living versus the quality of life with an international flair.

That's the title that'll be coming in the next few days. But I'm not planning to turn the show into the international living or the international radical personal finance platform. I'm not sure how long I'll be out of the United States. The United States is a wonderful place to live, and I don't know how, and I don't wanna lose all of my appeal to a broad stream US audience by turning the show entirely international.

But let's start with what your interest is. Why are you interested in moving outside of the United States? - I just think it's something that hasn't been fully explored in the personal finance space, and I don't know whether we will or we won't, but it's something I'm interested in learning a little more about.

- Sure. Well, I'll give you just a quick overview, a quick sneak peek, and then give you a chance to ask any questions that you personally have or in terms of your personal interests. Moving outside of the United States could be, for many people, a real solution to a set of problems.

And the same thing could be said for moving outside of Canada or of Germany or of Brazil or any other place. My reasons for doing it aren't really financial, although there can be financial benefits. The biggest financial benefit of moving outside of your home country is most likely going to be tax savings.

So, for example, as I laid out when I talked about the benefit of leaving the United States in terms of some of the tax savings or the foreign earned income exclusion, I mean, for somebody who is earning $100,000 a year from a location-independent business, saving $30,000 of taxes can make a huge difference in their overall financial plans.

That's a really compelling reason for somebody like that to move outside of the country. And more and more, this can be done by people in unique and I would say relatively traditional, relatively traditional industries. I gave advice to a guy one time who was a mortgage broker, but as a mortgage broker, he did everything virtually already, and he moved to Panama.

He was living in Florida and he moved to Panama, and I walked him through all the ways that he could set that up, and he could continue to do his business from Panama. Everything he needed was right there. He was a few hours away from Florida with a $200 round trip flight on Spirit Airlines if he needed to get back to Florida.

And so for him, it could save him 30,000 bucks a year. And even if it's not a forever move, for somebody who's young and earning income, that's a big savings. And the savings are even more substantial for citizens of any other country, Canadians, Brits, Germans, Italians, et cetera, because for those citizens, you can 100% legally move and you can set up your circumstances where you legally owe no income tax whatsoever.

And even for American citizens, I think that the benefits of renunciation of citizenship are really, can be significant for somebody who is earning a lot of money. It's entirely legal. You can set it up so that you can pay $0 of capital gains tax if you're, and you can do that from other countries as well.

So for each person, they have to analyze the benefits. So if somebody is a high income earner or a wealthy person, there can be major benefits of moving abroad and expatriating. I guess probably the best high profile example in the last few years from the American context was Eduardo Saverin, one of the early persons involved with Facebook, who he was born in Brazil, but he moved to Singapore.

And along the way, he renounced his US citizenship. He had to pay millions of dollars of tax, but he still saved millions of dollars by renouncing his US citizenship. Now, that's the big savings that can be had. I'm unconvinced of the value of moving abroad with regard to saving money on expenses.

I think in most cases, the United States is one of the cheapest places in the world to live. It often doesn't feel like that, especially with regard to housing costs, but I'm here to say it is, because overall, if you're not a high income earner, you can live pretty tax efficiently, pretty cost efficiently in the US American context.

So I don't know, if I didn't make a lot of money, I don't know of a better place to live than the United States. So that's kind of the financial arm. I think there are other benefits though, with regard to the just basic lifestyle. Some people don't fit well in US American culture.

I think it'd be better off for them to go somewhere where they did fit well, if they could find such a place. There are some things that people want in terms of a lifestyle, the certain things that they're looking for. And if they would open their eyes a little bit, they might find something different in another place.

So those are just some general things. I'll keep talking more about it. It's certainly, I can't hide the fact that for me, having expatriated from the United States has certainly been a, I can't, I mean, I can't, the show is largely related to who I am and what I do.

So I can't hide from that, but it's not without its costs. I miss a lot of things about the United States and I'm not sure I'll be gone forever. Any specific questions? - No, thank you. I just wanted to let you know, I was interested in that content and I appreciate your perspective.

- Well, I will keep it going in the future as more, as I come up with more ideas, I will do that. So thank you for calling in. All right, we go next to Pennsylvania. Welcome to the show. How can I serve you today? - Yeah, hi there, Joshua.

My name is Guy Smith. I've been listening for about four years and I've called in before too on some of these open calls. I just happened to pop in on Facebook and there you were. So I thought I'd give it a shot. First of all, I wanna thank you for a couple of callers back.

I really kind of answered one of the questions I've been looking at. I have a personal finance podcast of my own and I've been trying to figure out what to offer and how to monetize and what courses look like for me. And that helped kind of guide me along the way a little bit with that.

So I really appreciate that. - Good. - So my main question, when I saw it pop up, what I decided kind of to ask you about today is so when I think about investing, one of the things I've been transitioning a little bit or I guess studying my investing strategy a little bit more the last couple of years than I have before.

In the past, I just had a financial advisor and started putting money away, filling up my Roth IRA in a managed fund. And then I started doing some research. I started doing a lot of index fund investing. So I'm investing in total stock market, things of that nature. And that's going well, I'm being consistent.

I know that's a long-term strategy, but I recently had a relative who is an attorney, very successful, someone that I trust and respect, started discussing dividend investing with me. And he kind of invests in, he kind of has, he really kind of explained it. He's done this a long time, he's very successful at it.

He just said, "Hey, I have 22 companies "that I invest in regularly. "My role is they have to put out a dividend "and the dividend has to be increasing yearly." And he kind of pitched it to me in a way that he said every month when he puts money in, whichever company is doing the worst is the company he invests in.

So I've kind of been looking at that, but I'm studying the differences there. And I'd be interested to your take away. My main question with this is figuring out investing from a moral standpoint. And what I mean by that is as a Christian, and actually as a pastor, one of the things I tried to kind of figure out is understanding that my money is an asset that God's entrusting to me.

And so I have this, he's not a Christian, so I have this, I think, I have this higher level of moral standard than he has. I, you know what I mean? I kind of take it a little bit more seriously in the fact, in the sense of where am I putting my money and what kind of business am I supporting?

So to kind of just kind of shorten this up, I realize that by investing in an index fund, I'm investing in every company, essentially, publicly traded in the US, which that means I'm investing in companies that are actively supporting things that I wouldn't wanna support. But I kind of feel like, and you tell me what you think of this, tell me if I'm just completely wrong or off on this, or it's the same thing.

Might be six of one and half a dozen of the other, but for me to hand pick a company, say, you know, a blue chip company, that someday, maybe not today, but maybe in the future, I find that they're actively sending money to say an LGBTQ organization. Is it fair to me, or how should I navigate, how would you navigate the fact that I'm now owner of a business that's supporting that, versus it's kind of the same thing to say, well, I'm already doing that with an index fund.

But I kind of feel like in my, say if a business in my hometown was looking for local investors and I invested in them, but then found out that they were supporting an organization I didn't believe in, I kind of feel like I should handle that the same way.

The piece of me that's like, yeah, but everything's kind of going in these certain directions. And I think, well, maybe it's just kind of the greed in me or what have you, where I'm kind of like, yeah, but those big successful companies, ah, you know, it all kind of comes out of the wash.

I guess I'm just kind of wanting to, I always really appreciate your take on balancing Bible and business, and so I, and money in with all of that. So I kind of wanted to see what your take and how you would approach that kind of investing. Or am I kind of, am I kind of just kind of splitting hairs here, versus just if I'm gonna do dividend investing, I just need to be a little bit more vigilant about what company receives my money.

- So there are two, you've touched on basically two questions that are radically different. I'll start with the dividend question, because that will be the shorter answer. But I'll just give you a few things to consider. If you're trying to compare dividend investing versus, let's just compare it to index fund investing, which is your alternative choice, basically, you, it's a hard comparison to make in some ways.

I think dividend investing is a powerful way to invest. And what I like the most about dividend investing is because, is that, the practice of dividend investing gives somebody the appreciation that their companies generate income and profits and they receive that. And so for a dividend investor, it's a fairly simple thing for them to say, I wanna live on my dividends, I need $5,000 a month to live, so I'm gonna develop a portfolio that will pay me $5,000 in dividends.

And that's a very powerful thing. It's one of the reasons why I think real estate is so powerful for ordinary people, because you can spend the rents that you get in. And so dividend investing is extremely powerful because of its simplicity and its intuitive nature. Second thing I would say is, when you put together a basket of anything more than, say, 10 companies, especially big, good companies that are publicly traded in the United States, it's very hard to go wrong.

So don't think that your attorney buddy is somehow a genius because he has 22 or 26 companies and that they do well for him. The majority of companies on the United States face such intense pressure that they have to do well. They have to be productive. And when you think about all the different things that they have to be productive with, they have a team of thousands of people usually spread all around the world.

They have global operations selling diverse products. They have teams inside where they're constantly trying to come up with new ways to make money. They have professional management, professional boards. It's pretty unusual for one of those companies to spectacularly fail. Now, it does happen, but it's unusual for one of those companies to spectacularly fail or to go bankrupt.

And if a company starts to lag, especially a publicly traded company, remember all of the officers and directors of that company, the majority or at least a significant portion of their compensation is based upon their financial performance, their stock price, et cetera. And so everybody in that company has an incentive to generate more profits and to fix the problem.

So the board will start swapping out management, things will happen. So if you just picked at random any 10 companies from the S&P 500, you could come up with a pretty good solid portfolio that would probably in the fullness of time, a few decades worth, would probably perform fairly well.

Now, dividends are a mark of a company's health, a mark of their financial health. The fact that they're actually making money. They actually have customers. They actually do business. So that's a very good mark. So that takes it up even more from some of these speculative businesses that have a lot of customers, but they lose money every quarter.

So you can make a very good case just simply for that, for dividend investing. And I like it. I don't have a problem with it. Here's one thing though that is important. Dividends are not magic. And some companies are oriented towards paying dividends and some companies are oriented towards growth.

And both of these things can be spent. So you can spend growth and you can spend dividends. So let's use real estate to have a very intuitive example. If you buy a house that's worth $100,000 and you rent that house out for $1,000 a month, you can spend the $1,000 a month.

But if your house increases in market value from 100,000 to $150,000, you can also spend the $50,000. It's not unspendable just because it grew and you had your gain from the appreciation of the house and not just from the rents. Now in real estate, it's a little harder to access because you'd have to take it out in debt or sell the whole property.

But in stocks, it's very easy to access. You just simply sell some shares. And you can go and you can look at, what would be, I guess the most famous example would be something like Berkshire Hathaway, right? No dividends, but their stock price is whatever, 100 and I have no idea what it is these days, but six figures.

So both are valuable. And I would say that in some ways, you could make the argument that it's bad for a company to pay dividends, that I would much rather a company never pay dividends so that the money stayed in the hands of the director so that they could invest it effectively than that they pay dividends.

I guess probably the textbook example here would be a company like Apple, which historically was allergic to paying dividends because somebody like Steve Jobs and their management team would say, listen, we can grow this thing so much bigger if we don't send out dividends. And so I'm cool with that story too.

Just like I'm cool with the story of dividends, I'm cool with the story of a company saying, we're not gonna send dividends out. Don't you want us to invest your money? We've got a world full of opportunity. We've got tremendous ways where we can invest this money, and we'll just go ahead and invest it for you and grow the company bigger.

And so then when you bring in tax considerations, you can make a good argument as well, because I'd a whole lot rather the companies that I own not send me any dividends, which I have to pay taxes on. I'd rather they just grow and keep everything stable, and I'll trigger the taxes when I want to actually sell the shares.

So those are two very simplistic arguments on both sides of the dividend and investing thing. I would say in some ways, it is six, one, half dozen, the other. That different people will click with different things. The most important thing in my opinion is that an investor finds a strategy that they like, that they believe in, so that they'll stick with it, they understand it and are happy with it.

And so then you can have decades of successful investing, and the investor will be satisfied because the investor's goals are being met. It's all academic nonsense to try to say, well, is growth investing better or is dividend investing? It's interesting, but it's academic nonsense, because at the end of the day, what we care about is having spendable money.

That's why we're investing. And so if we're investing to have income, then we recognize that. And the goal is not to be the most productive investor on Wall Street, the goal is to have income that we can spend on cruises and on houses and on college for our kids or whatever the circumstance is.

So those are my comments on dividend investing as compared to other forms of investing. It's perfectly fine. There are good investment newsletters. The best thing you should do is go down to your local library and read all the investment newsletters and be amazed at how good each of the strategies is, and you'll start to appreciate that many strategies can work.

- Yeah, I appreciate that. I was listening to one of your older podcasts. I think it was 2014. You interviewed a guy who has a website all about dividend investing, and he made an interesting comment, and I don't think your opinion on it came out of that, where he talked about the difference where dividend investing, he doesn't have to, he compared it to cutting off branches from a tree versus just harvesting the fruit, where with dividend investing, you get the dividend and he still has the same amount of shares, whereas with an index fund or a mutual fund or maybe even with your growth investing that you mentioned, where you're actually cutting off a share, you're cutting off a branch.

How does that play out in the real world once you start pulling money from this in retirement? - That was episode 96 of the podcast released November 5, 2014, called Financial Independence via Dividend Investing. It was an interview with Jason from Dividend Mantra. To me, it just doesn't matter.

I recognize that he's got a point there that could make sense for some people, but for me, it doesn't really matter. For me, the stronger argument is a matter of saying, I want the company to invest it effectively. I mean, just imagine this. Pretend, let's go with real estate.

Pretend I am a real estate investor, and I'm very good. Pretend I'm making 20% returns per year, year in, year out, all secured by a rock-solid portfolio, and you say, "I wanna invest with you, Joshua," and you bring me your $300,000, and I say, "Do you need any money?" You say, "No, I'm investing this for retirement." And so you give me $300,000.

Do you want me to send you a check every thousand, you know, a check for $5,000 per month, or do you want me to buy another property for you so that you can have a future bigger check? In my opinion, it doesn't, like, I'd rather, I want, if you find somebody who's investing money well for you, I want them to grow my money.

I don't need the money back. Now, and that's why you usually will see dividends paid by companies that are longer in term, they're more stable, they're in more mature markets, et cetera, and in that case, they say, "Listen, we can do a good business here, "but we're happy to pay profits." So I don't have a problem.

I could be a very happy dividend investor, and I could very happily receive no dividends. I'm not convinced that there's a right answer either way. - Okay, all right, thank you for that. - So let me pivot to your second question, which is, of course, much more difficult, but I would say very pertinent.

The question you have to ask yourself is how much moral responsibility do I personally bear for the way that my money is invested? Now, you said that you're coming from a Christian perspective, you're a Christian pastor, so here is my understanding of biblical theology as it relates to money.

Number one, in the Bible, it's clearly taught that the money that we have is not our money, it's God's money, and we are stewards of that money. We're not owners, we're stewards. Now, as stewards, we're to be supported by that. God provides for us, it's fine to spend money for the things that we need, but we're not ultimately owners.

So I think of it as a steward, and I say, "I'm a steward of these resources." Now, as a steward, what would please my master in the way that these resources are invested? How can I please my master with these resources? So if you look at an investment decision, the goal is to look at it and say, "Would my master be pleased "with my making this investment decision?" I think that's the best way to look at it.

It's the very, very clearly true in your theology, and it's a very useful, useful way to look at it, because it keeps us in an appropriate position of being constrained and recognizing I'm a steward, and so this money needs to be invested for God's benefit. It needs to be invested into his kingdom.

It needs to be invested for gain. Now, that can be challenging, because you look at it and say, "Does that mean that I give everything away?" Maybe. "Does it mean that I buy a stock?" Maybe. "Does it mean that I start a business?" Maybe. "Does it mean that I send myself "to out on the mission field?" Maybe.

I don't know of a way that any of us could answer that for other people. If we go back to the most important stewardship parables as taught by Jesus, you see in some ways that there was a very wide degree of latitude between the master and his servants. When the master gave the money to his servants, he said, "Here's the money," and then he went on a trip, and he didn't necessarily say, "Here's what you have to do with it." The only person that, in the parable of the talents, the only person who was condemned to outer darkness was the person who didn't at least take the money and go down and invest it with the money changers to make some interest.

Everyone else was rewarded for that. Now, the challenge is, in the United States, most financial education is built upon a foundation of corporate financial management. We are taught that the way that we invest is through mutual funds. We're taught that the only rational way to invest is with an IRA.

Well, why are we taught that? It's not a natural truth. It's not something that can be deduced by just simply looking around and saying, "Well, this is the way that it should be." It's something that's taught by the corporate financial industry. Now, I'm thankful for that industry. It's an amazing thing.

The public stock market is an incredible thing. The mutual fund industry is an incredible thing. To have such a world of investments available to us is a really powerful and wonderful thing. And so I'm thankful that it exists. I don't say that it's a bad thing, but I do think it's important to recognize that it's a very corporatized model.

And so the incentive that somebody has to come and sell you an investment is based upon their incentive to earn it. And even someone like Jack Bogle, he was certainly a humble, down-to-earth guy who really cared about people and cared about excellent investing. I think that's great. He was a capitalist, just like me.

We're all in that, but we just gotta recognize that this is a very corporatized model. And it's very unusual. If we were to go through the span of history and look at our modern day, the modern corporatized financial management system basically is an invention of, what, the last century, I think would be a good statement to say, basically the last century.

And what's more important is it's basically the mass involvement of people in the markets, the way that we have today, is basically an invention of the last 30 to 50 years. Because prior to the last 30 to 50 years with the 401(k) revolution, the average American and the average person in the world never owned stocks.

Stock market was a rich man's game. Stock ownership and investment was something that the wealthy people did. So the average person really never considered going and buying a share of stocks. So this is a very, very new thing. Now, let's look at the question and say, is this a good thing?

Has it been a force for good? Maybe, maybe not. We could analyze it in different ways. But I want to think carefully and recognize that taking money and buying a mutual fund from Vanguard, shares of a mutual fund from Vanguard is not the historical thing that should always be done with money.

So is it the best thing for me to do with money? I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I see a lot of problems to lay at the feet of the corporatized financial investment schemes. I see a whole lot of things that really could be acknowledged by that industry. And I see a whole lot of harm that comes when people think that that's the only way that they can invest.

Now, I used to be part of it. I used to sell mutual funds, I used to sell insurance, I used to have those licenses, et cetera, and I left it. When I left, I didn't leave for moral reasons. Although I had some misgivings about a number of different things, but there was nothing where I said, I just can't, I can't be associated with this anymore.

That was never my own personal story. But as I left, I did start to gain increasing clarity. Now to the question of should I invest with this company? I would say that any person who is not wrestling with that is probably not thinking soberly about it. I don't think this is an area where any of us have the right to say to another person, you cannot do this, or for you to own an index fund is sin.

I don't see any biblical warrant as to why we could make a statement that strong. However, it is a matter of conscience, and I think it is a matter where increasingly we should pay attention to it. I came to a point sometime after I left the financial industry where I could no longer do it.

And I came to the point where I said, I was so disgusted with the actions of the large publicly traded companies in the United States, I was so disgusted with it, I came to a point where I said, I can't do it. I can't be complicit. I can't stand before God and say that I'm investing his money into this trash.

Now whatever the issue, there are many good things to be concerned about. There are traditional concerns about the promotion of sin and immorality, whether it's alcohol companies or tobacco companies, things like that. I'm not personally as bothered by that stuff as many people are, although I recognize that there's an argument there.

I have major moral misgivings about the engagement of American industry in war. If we go back and we trace the violence and the war that's been perpetrated over the last century by US American companies being primarily the supporters of that, the development of the military industrial complex, the funding of that, it's absolutely, utterly immoral what has done and what has been promoted by the leaders of these companies.

And they've made their fortunes murdering people all around the world. And that gets very underappreciated in many parts. And yet it's a major function of American foreign diplomacy, et cetera. You can go back and trace it all the way through. Other more hot button current moral issues, abortion. Look at the, it's very hard for me when you see that the companies trying to, especially the media companies, et cetera, all the current hoopla over abortion, saying, well, we're not gonna film films in Georgia, we're not gonna do this, or we're gonna boycott this state and the other state.

That's your money that you're funding that stuff for the murder of babies, the most helpless, indefensible creatures among us. How can I earn off of this company that is spending my money, God's money, on this kind of thing? And then it's become especially difficult, as you say, with the promotion of homosexuality.

Right now, we're just finishing up Pride Month in the United States of America. And I can't think of, I mean, I'm sure they're out there, but almost anywhere you turn, every major company is actively promoting homosexual practice, which is utterly harmful to people, utterly a moral abomination. And then especially now you bring it on with transgenderism, which destroys people's lives.

And yet that's the active thing. So you look at that, and it's increasingly hard for me to understand how any person with any moral thinking could be engaged in that. Now, I understand the people who promote it as a moral issue, but at this point in time, Jesus said you can't serve God and money.

And I think that increasingly, if there's ever been a clearer point in time at which people have to look at things squarely and say, is this where I wanna invest my money? And I would say that the corporate financial industry has been a major cause in many of those problems, where every single month, billions of dollars just automatically get funneled into Vanguard, automatically get funneled into a 401k.

And so there's not a pushback by those investors. They don't know what they're invested in. It's not like they own shares of Facebook, and then they look and see what Facebook is doing and censoring people and shutting people down and deplatforming, and they say, oh man, I should sell my Facebook stock.

Nobody knows, you can't figure out what you own when you own an index fund. You can't figure out what you own when you own an actively managed fund. And so people just wash their hands of it, and they say, I'm not involved. So to your answer, I mean, I don't own any publicly traded companies.

And at this point in time, I cannot, of good conscience, invest in a broad-based fund where somebody is going to engage in something that is harmful, and they're going to profit off of it. The utter hypocrisy that you see in corporate America, words fail to describe the absolute hypocrisy.

But everybody worships at the almighty dollar, and it almost doesn't matter the harm that you inflict on people in terms of the businesses that are gonna be involved in. And so at this point in time, it's hard for me to see how a thoughtful person who cares about that can't at least wrestle with these things.

So my answer is pretty clear. I mean, you've heard it, is that I'm not going to be complicit in that. Now, I've often wondered, am I wrong? And I've often wondered, could I go back into that world? Could I engage in that business again? Maybe someday you can, and I'm not gonna accuse somebody else of sin because they own an index fund.

But for me, I just look at it, and when I compare it to the things that could be done, I don't want any involvement with it. It's a corrupt, morally bankrupt industry, and it's not helpful. Now, does that mean that you can't invest money profitably and become very wealthy?

No, there's a world of investments out there. And I have no problem with owning publicly traded companies. I'm much more comfortable with it if you own individual companies that you can say, okay, they're not destroying the world. They're not raining bombs down on people 'cause they're brown. They're not trying to manipulate the public.

They're not engaged in something that's immoral. But when you open up investing and bring it locally, which is, I'm convinced, probably the best solution, then all of a sudden, now you have much bigger options. Because here's the challenge, and this is where, whenever I speak about these things, I get an inbox full of people that say, call me a bigot and whatever other insult.

But here's the reality. If I'm investing in a local business where I know the people and I know the industry, then I can do, I can assure that something is rightly done. For example, there's a big difference. When I used to, when I worked for a big company, let's talk about diversity and inclusion, right?

You brought up how do we deal with LGBTQ questions, we finish up Pride Month, et cetera. It would not bother me in a business that I'm running. I would hire gay people all day long if they were qualified for the job. Because in my opinion, it's not right, I'm not trying to discriminate against a person for their sin in terms of hiring them in my company.

Because if I'm gonna do that, I've got to have a very challenging road to hoe. How do I deal with somebody's adultery? How do I deal with somebody's lying? How do I deal with somebody's homosexuality, et cetera? There's a big difference between me running a business or being involved in that, where we can actively hire people without regard to things that we think should, without regard to lifestyle decisions that we believe are immoral.

But there's a big difference between that versus a big publicly traded company having a diversity and inclusion committee saying our goal is to go out and hire a certain percentage of people who engage in homosexuality or a certain percentage of people who have a certain skin color, et cetera, so that we can reach the Human Rights Commission or whatever the ranking is, so that we can be well ranked for the Pride March.

There's a major difference between those two things. And so that's what to me is probably under discussed is the key is to have control. And I support people's rights to discriminate. I think that all of us have the right to discriminate on any basis we want to, and I'll defend that left, right, and center.

You have the right to discriminate in how you hire. You have the right to discriminate in who you hire. You have the right. I cannot come in and tell you who you should hire and what you should do. But that doesn't automatically mean that my goal is to say, to take a company and say, "How can I discriminate against this class of people "or this group of people," et cetera.

So there's my answer to your question is I'm bothered by many of those same things, and I want very little part of it. I don't deny that. I'm not saying that's for everybody, but I can no longer participate in that world in clear conscience. - Well, I love it, Joshua.

I appreciate that fabulous answer. I love the depth of your answer. And my follow-up question to that would have been, and I think you pretty well addressed it, would be if not the stock market and wanting to invest for long-term, say, retirement, if not for the stock market, knowing my money's gonna grow with the economy, then what?

And you're kind of driving it towards local businesses and your own businesses. I know, I mean, my son is a small business owner, and he does do stock market mutual fund investing through an advisor, but he puts the vast majority of his money back into his business because he knows his profit margins, and he said, "I'm gonna make a lot more in my business "than I will in the stock market." So that's-- - Yeah, and in addition-- - So it-- - Yeah, I am, and just what I would say is if you're talking about it from the perspective of Christian ministry as well, which obviously you are, one of the major benefits that you have when you're involved in a business that actually hires people, when you're involved in something where you can actually make an impact, is you have the opportunity to provide work for people, and that's what, to me, has been a major change.

I used to have thousands of dollars invested in publicly traded companies. They don't care what I say, they don't care what I do, they don't care about me, and I get no benefit from that company whatsoever except possible changes in share value and maybe a dividend if they pay me a dividend.

But if we change that, if I start a bakery in my local community, and I'm running a local bakery, then I have the opportunity to hire the kid who just got expelled from school who needs a job. I have the opportunity to hire the person who can't get a job because their face is covered with tattoos.

I have the opportunity to hire the person who went through a sex change surgery and nobody wants to give him a job now. I have the opportunity to employ those people. And when you look at the breakdown and the collapse in many of our communities, if more people stopped sending their money to Vanguard and started investing it in their local community, it's possible that that could make a big difference.

I don't know if I'll do radical personal finance for, I don't know how long I'll do it. But the thing that frustrates me deeply about this business is although it has a whole long raft of opportunities, I can't hire anybody. I mean, I can hire people, but the work is so specialized that it's not something where I don't have the capacity to employ people.

And I look around and I see so many people who need a job, who need training, who need instruction. And I think the best way to do that is often through a company. And so I can't tell other people what they can do with their time or their money, but I see many more opportunities of being involved in that kind of business where you have an opportunity to not only invest very profitably, but now you have something that I can actually do some good in the world.

And unlike a company that makes their, their living building bombs, you can actually do something that helps your local community. So I don't know how to teach it all. I'm doing it privately, trying to do my very best to learn 'cause it's a skill set I wasn't prepared for.

I spent a decade sowing myself to learning about the stock market. And at this point, I'm done with it. I don't care. I don't wanna be involved in it. I wanna be involved with people and I wanna be involved with my local community. So there's my answer. - Yeah, okay.

Well, I love it. I appreciate it. And that's the thing I wanna, I wanna handle this well from a Christian moral standpoint, but then I also wanna be investing to get wealthy. I'm just investing to be able to, I don't really have, I'm just investing so that someday if I ever want to or have to quit working, then I'll be able to take care of my family and 'cause I mean, I'm in a, talk and think I'm gonna be okay, right?

From a physical longevity standpoint. But hey, I really appreciate your time and your experience. - My pleasure, yeah. I don't see a reason not to be actively involved in the investment marketplace. And one of the problems I think about a lot, a godly man leaves an inheritance to his children's children.

That inheritance might be morality and character and many things, but I think it also comes in big time into money. We go now, next caller. Welcome to Radical Personal Finance. How can I serve you today? - Hey, my name is Art Crimpon. I'm calling from, well, I'm calling from UK number.

I'm actually based in Egypt. I'm listening to you from Egypt. I'm a long time listener. I used to listen from Angola. When I lived in Angola, we had a huge commute three, four hours every day. And I used to listen to your shows, literally three, four hours every day.

I probably listened to 95% of Radical Personal Finance shows. I just skipped the ones that I completely, America centered. I have a short message or question. Message is that just enormous thanks for what you do, for the content that you put out. And I want you to know that even though a lot of the things that you've got and a lot of the examples that you use is related to the US, US stock market, 401k, Roth IRA, et cetera.

80% of it, 90% of it is very relevant at its core to any country, any situation, any culture, because personal finance, it really doesn't change from place to place. Some of the things might change, but the core message is the same. Doesn't matter if you're in Angola, if you're in Egypt, if you're in Portugal, it's the same.

So it's been extremely useful, everything that you do. Now, in terms of the question, we had actually a couple of exchanges about this on Twitter before. And you answered one of my questions in the previous Q&A that I also submitted on Twitter. But I'm grappling with this situation. I have a high paying, a well paying job.

I'm an expert. I'm not actually originally from Egypt or from Angola. I'm from Europe, but I've been living overseas for 80 years now, 70 years now. And as an expert, I've always been on a very good pay and package. And I've been able to save and invest. And I have just over a million dollars now in overall portfolio, which is invested in various things, stock market and dividend investing, which we'll discuss today, and some of the P2P loans and various things.

It produces quite a lot of income. I'm targeting about $50,000 of investment income, passive income for this year, for 2019. My plan is, or better to say, my plan was to eventually retire and go and live overseas, probably in Asia for some time, a place where I can use not even all of my passive income, just all of my passive income to have a comfortable life.

And then still be able to reinvest the rest of the income. And now when I get to a point where I feel like numbers make sense and I can actually do it, I can actually pull the trigger and fire, as they say, and actually retire. And I don't feel confident doing it.

Not in a way that I'm afraid that numbers are gonna make sense, I'm afraid that numbers are not gonna work. I am confident numbers are gonna work. And even if they don't work, even if something happens, I've got enough runway to change my mind and do something else. Even if I retire and something happens three years down the line, that's okay.

I still have five, 10, 15 years of runway to do something else. But I feel that, I feel that if I walk away from this career and job, I kind of completely lose my identity. I lose everything that I was working for for a long time. And I don't know how to, I don't know what am I going to do, essentially.

And I just wanted to, I wanted you to talk about how, what is the best way to approach it? What kind of framework you would use to prepare yourself for this life after being financially independent? And I don't want to, I'm not saying I don't wanna work. I'm just saying I don't wanna work in a sort of corporate structure, which is very rigid, very limiting.

I want to do something else. - Right. How old are you? - Excuse me? - How old are you? How old are you and do you, are you? - I'm 32. I have a family. I have a wife. She's a stay-at-home mom. We have four kids, from very little one to 16 year old.

So we have kids. And I'm prepared to, if I would retire and I would go traveling, I'm prepared to live with the kids. I have a plan for that. I have a couple of kids actually in the border of Scotland, so that wouldn't be a problem. So from family-wise, it's not really a problem.

I know it's a problem for a lot of people, but really not for me. My problem is more sort of, you know, mental issue. (phone ringing) - This call is being recorded. - That's it, I'm gonna quit making money. And then we just walk away because you can. There are a whole lot of worthy causes, a whole lot of worthy people that aren't gonna get supported because you don't have the money.

So we shouldn't just walk away from one of the most powerful things we have, which is a substantial income that we don't need just because we can. But by being financially independent, you can now consider a whole breadth of options that might be compelling to you, even options that you couldn't do if you needed money.

So on the orphanage example, maybe you recognize that you don't necessarily want to work to earn money to support an orphanage, but maybe that orphanage needs a father. And maybe because of the fact that you are financially independent, you can comfortably move to Angola or open an orphanage in Egypt or wherever you happen to be in the world.

And you can, while you're raising your biological children, you can sow yourself in the lives of a dozen or two other children that need you. And you don't have to go and ask for support or solicit donations or funds. You can just simply go and do it. Or whatever else is appropriate to you.

So I don't see any reason for somebody to quit their job if they don't have something more compelling. Now, if you need to make changes to your job, maybe you're working too much now, tell your boss, "I'm not gonna work this much. I've got young children, I'm gonna work less." If you're in a really bad job, you're doing something that's not good, by all means quit.

Quit and take a sabbatical and go look for something better. That's one of the benefits of financial independence. But why stop working unless you have something more compelling? So that's my answer. I don't see any reason to just run away from work simply because you can. You're giving up a major part of your life.

You're giving up a major part of your identity. And you're giving up one of the most powerful tools you have to make change and accomplish good in the world. Go ahead with your response. I know you've dropped off a couple of times, but go ahead with your response there.

- Yes, thank you. And I do feel the same. I do feel that it's a great asset on its own. Having a good job and a good career and a reputation in the industry is an asset on itself. So by just walking away, you kind of give up this asset and there'll be nothing else that you have lined up or planned to jump to, then it doesn't really make sense.

Maybe as a follow-up, moving from a sort of high-paying career or job to let's say, working in an orphanage, it requires also kind of a mindset change 'cause it's been drilled into me and I think a lot of people, a lot of people in corporate world, it's been drilled into you that your self-worth equals your net worth.

And it's just very difficult to move away from, like one of the most difficult things for me thinking about financial independence is that my net worth is probably not going to grow that much anymore. So right now, I'm tracking it, I'm tracking it monthly, I'm tracking my investments, I'm tracking my dividends, when I get dividends, how I've already invested, it's just such a huge part of my life.

Seeing that Excel spreadsheet with my net worth and how it goes up, it just validates what I do, it validates my effort, it validates all the late nights and all the hard work that you do. And not seeing it, I'm afraid of not seeing it in the future, I just gonna feel like a loser.

That's what I'm afraid of. And I know that it's wrong, I know that you shouldn't be optimizing your life just for highest possible net worth because it doesn't make sense, you're gonna die anyway, you're not gonna take it with you, it just doesn't make sense. But somehow it's been drilled into you by IT, by the environment, by the company, by whatever, it's been drilled into you.

And how do you begin to change your mindset from optimizing your life for growing the capital, from accumulating capital to changing this mindset and actually start with maybe even deaccumulating and focusing on other things. How do you make this step? - So first I would say, I'm not necessarily recommending that you do lower your income.

I think that's a false choice. You don't have to lower your income. And that's what, to emphasize it, you don't have to go from having a high paying job, a great career, and then all of a sudden believe that the only moral choice available to you is to go and not earn any income and go and run an orphanage in Angola.

That's not at all what I would say. I would not say that. My point in using an example like that was to say that it could be open, there could be opportunities open to you because of your financial independence that you wouldn't have felt previously were open to you.

Especially as a father, if you're a father of four children it would be unusual that a father of four children, especially if they're young, would feel good about saying I'm gonna go from a life where I can support my children adequately and in comfort to a life of poverty and do that with a clear heart, unusual.

So financial independence could be the opportunity where you could say I can provide for my children but I can also do something else that can't easily be paid for. But you shouldn't necessarily start with that. First, I would say just consider continuing to work in the career that you have.

Why change if it's not causing problems to you? But if you are thinking about going to something else, is there somewhere else where your talents and skills can be useful where not only can you have a bigger impact but you can make more money? I think the best way to think about money and income is related to service.

The way I answer every call on this show is how can I serve you today? And I do that intentionally because I want to be a servant. It comes down to Jesus said, "The greatest among you would be the servant of all." So those who serve the most people and who serve the most effectively are by definition the greatest.

So the way up is not to say I'm going to lord over people or coerce people or force people or take advantage of people. The way up is to serve. That's how God designed the world. And you see that reflected when you see a healthy market, a healthy, even a healthy company.

And so the way to earn more money is not to see that somehow if I earn more money, I have to do more evil. Certainly there are people who have made that bargain with the devil, but that's not necessarily the case. Generally, the people who serve more and who serve more effectively will often get paid more and get paid more handsomely.

So I would look at it and say, what's the next rung on the career ladder? What's the next job? What's the next position that would fit in with the things that are important to me that would work with the skills that I personally have so that I can more effectively serve more people and make more money?

Why sit around and stagnate? Why sit around and just say, well, I'm not going to make any more money or I'm going to walk away from earned income. Why not continue to embrace the thrill of the competition to continue to engage with the world and the market and move on to something bigger and better?

I don't want my business to have the same profitability next year as it has this year. I want it to be far more profitable. I want it to be far more profitable 10 years from now as it is today. But the only way that's going to happen is if I serve more people effectively.

That's how business works. So you look around and you say, who do I serve? Well, I serve my coworkers. I serve my boss. I serve the people who work under me. I serve the people who work over me. And all of us collectively are serving our customers. But as we do that more effectively, we make more money.

As we make more money collectively, I make more money. As I make more money, I grow wealthier and I'm able to save more, to spend more, give more. So why not go the next stage up on the career ladder? Why not look for something that's bigger and better and more exciting?

That's what I would say. And just make sure that it doesn't cause a problem with something else that's important to you. For example, I wouldn't take a job that paid me double if it meant that I had to be on an airplane every week away from my young children.

That might be fine if I'm 60 and I don't have children in the house. But it's not OK for me as a young father. So that would be too big of a cost on something that's important to me that I can't compensate. I could buy my wife three maids, but that's still not going to compensate for my presence in the home.

So I wouldn't take that job offer. I would wait till I was 60 to do that. But as long as you're not compromising something else that's important to you, why not take the job that's bigger and better? That's what I would say. OK, thank you. So yeah, what you kind of lead me to is that I can use the capital and the income as sort of a stepping stone for, let's say, a career change.

And then initially, yes, it can cost money and it can cost some of the income because you're changing jobs, you're changing careers. But you do it with a view to find a better fit for your skills, personality, talent, and then potentially through serving more people, make more money in the future.

So it doesn't need to be-- finding a better fit does not necessarily need to be a step down. I understand. Thank you. All right. Yeah, and I would say it doesn't need to be a step down. And oftentimes, the alternative as far as if you just take something that pays less money, oftentimes that isn't going to work out as well.

Who has more personal freedom, the CEO of a company or the entry-level secretary? The CEO has unlimited freedom. He can come and go as he likes. He can come and he can travel the world. He can do anything. He's responsible for the big results, the big pictures. And yet, he has huge amounts of freedom.

The new secretary that comes in, he's got all kinds of problems. He's got to be there at 9 o'clock, leave at 5 o'clock, and only makes a little bit of money, has almost no personal freedom. And so there doesn't have to be this connection where somehow, by definition, as you go up and earn more money, you lose freedom.

Now, there is a component where, as you take on more responsibility, it will be more wearing to you. The CEO who's responsible for the jobs of hundreds of people, who's responsible to his board of directors, et cetera, will have more stress and has more responsibility than the secretary. The secretary simply has to come on time and do the job that they're given on time.

But the CEO has many more responsibilities to do. So you do have to balance that. I'm not convinced that being CEO of a huge company is necessarily the best thing for everybody. But I don't think it should just be dismissed by definition. The bigger, better job, the higher paying job, is not by definition more constraining or more difficult or something not worth looking at.

In fact, I think it's the opposite. If you're going to make an argument, I think the argument goes in the opposite direction. Good question. I thank you for listening to the show as you have traveled around the world. And I love-- that's what I love about podcasting, is from now on, I'll picture you or someone like you listening to my show as they sit through Angola traffic.

So thank you very much for calling in. That's it for the live call-in questions for today's show. I'm going to take one more question, though, that a patron wrote in for the show who wasn't able to call in live. Patron writes in and says this. Hi, Joshua. My wife and I are having trouble deciding where to go next in our portfolio.

We both max out our 401(k) accounts, both Roth and non-Roth contributions. Our modified adjusted gross income is above the amount allowed for Roth IRA and the traditional IRA deduction. We have two rental properties that have good cash flow. No doubt, no debt except mortgages on my primary and the two rentals.

Ideally, I would like a place to access money easily in my 50s. I'm 34, and my wife is 31, to achieve early financial freedom. Not necessarily thinking of leaving the workforce, but would like to have greater control over my time. Any ideas? And I wrote back and asked him if he had any children.

And he writes in and says, we have a baby on the way, our first, which is due late November, and we'll try to have one or possibly two more. Now, this question, my answer, will in some ways line up with one of the earlier questions. But in a way, I don't have any good solutions.

As far as I can determine, there are really only three basic things that you can invest in. So one would be paper assets. So you can invest in some kind of paper asset or paper investment. That could include a stock. Could include a bond. Could include a mortgage. But any kind of paper asset.

The second category of investments would be some sort of real property. So that could involve a small single family house. It could involve a ranch. It could involve raw timber. It could involve a condominium in Dubai. But some sort of real property investment. And then the third thing would basically be some sort of business that you have an active participation in.

So that could be a local McDonald's franchise. That could be a local construction company. That could be a local farm. That could be a local medical office. That could be a local surgery center. I mean, there's no limit to what it could be. But as best I could tell-- or I guess I should maybe add another third thing.

It would almost fall into real property. Although real property would used to be real estate land and things attached to land. But perhaps there's some kind of personal or tangible property investment. So you could buy classic artwork. You could buy gold coins. You could buy diamonds. You could buy old tools and fix them up and sell them on eBay.

You could buy old saddles or make saddles or something like that. So as far as I can tell, those are the basic categories of investments. Would be some sort of paper asset, some sort of real property-- I guess I make it four-- some sort of personal property and/or some kind of business that you are involved in.

And so when you're thinking about investment options, within any category, there's almost an unlimited range of things that could be invested in. You could say, well, I want to invest in coins. But then you could get deeper in and say, I want to invest in Austrian bullion, or I want to invest in the Buffalo nickels.

There's almost no limit to the specifics that you can go into. And is one thing better than another? Well, I'm certainly not qualified to tell you every good investment asset that's out there. I think that comes down to what's available to you. You might have an interest in buying nickels.

And so you buy nickels, and you stash them in a .30 caliber ammo box, and you stack them up in a secure storage somewhere because you'd like to have some of the benefits of investing in nickels. And I might look and say, I'd like to own this condo in Panama City.

And so I'm going to buy a condo in Panama City because that makes sense to me. We all look at these different things. But those are the basic categories, as far as I can tell, that exist. Once you choose a category that's interesting to you, once you do your homework on it, once you're comfortable with it, I don't see any reason not to just stick with that category.

So if you have a couple of rental properties, then why shouldn't you buy more? If two are good, then probably eight is probably better. Now, you do, as your portfolio expands, you do have to consider if there is something that is going to be problematic. So maybe you can manage two rental properties in your spare time.

Maybe you can manage eight rental properties in your spare time. But you probably can't manage 80 in your spare time. And so you start to reach a point where this particular category of investment is not going to turn out well in the long run. That's what is so lovely about paper investments through broad stream mutual funds is that there's no limit to the amount of money you can put into them.

You can put $100,000. You can put $1 million. You can put $10 million. And it's all the same. It doesn't change your time commitment whatsoever. So that is a major advantage of a paper asset that it's less complex. You can buy a few thousand dollars in nickels and stash them under your bed.

A few million dollars in nickels is a little harder to figure out how to transport and store and deal with. And so each investment category is going to have its basic challenge. My answer to your question would go back to your life cycle, the phase of your life cycle.

And it would relate to your non-financial goals. If we're just analyzing this financially, I think you just say, what do I know? What works? What's going to give me a good rate of return? And do more of that. And I don't think you should feel like you need to do anything other than buy rental houses and buy mutual funds.

Why should you do any more than that? Unless you have some different vision. For me, what I find very compelling is thinking about my children, thinking about businesses that my children could be involved in, and thinking about how to impact the world for good through business. That's what came out in the question that the caller asked earlier, where we're talking about that.

I see effectively run businesses as one of the keys of transforming the world. So if Facebook has its agenda that it's going to aggressively prosecute, or if GE has its agenda, or if Walmart has its agenda, or if Coca-Cola has its agenda, or if Apple has its agenda, and they're going to aggressively prosecute their agenda, then how am I going to counteract them?

Well, I can stand and hold a sign in front of Apple's downtown headquarters. What's the point of that? Why bother? But what I can actually do, if I'm really interested in it, is I can say, how can I compete with Apple? Or how can I compete with Facebook? So if I'm frustrated with what a certain company is doing, then my answer is, how can I invest into something that's doing something different?

So if I don't like what Apple is doing, then who is a competitor to Apple that I can invest in and that I can participate in? Or is there something that I can do to start? Now, I don't have the capacity to start a company that is going to compete with Apple.

But you might. I don't have the ability to deal on that level. But I can look locally, and I can say, well, I don't like what Walmart is doing down the road. So why don't I do this? Or I see this need in my community. And I see that children have nothing to do except go home and play video games by themselves in the afternoon.

So maybe I can start a maker space. You know what? I'll give you my ideas. These are mine. Here are some things that-- I'm not going to give all of them, because I have some that are-- but I'll give some that are a little bit lower on my list.

If I close down Radical Personal Finance today, here are some things that I would pursue. Number one is I would consider starting a maker space. Because one of the-- and so by way of description, a maker space is basically a facility, picture a warehouse or some sort of facility, where there is a community of people coming together who are interested in doing things and who are interested in developing things.

And there's usually some equipment that is available for them, whether it's tools-- could be woodworking tools, a table saw, chop saw, et cetera. Could be metalworking tools, a lathe, a welding kit. Could be a screen printing machine to screen print t-shirts or computer equipment or a 3D printer, et cetera.

But usually some equipment. But one of the things that I would dearly love to do is I would dearly love to start and facilitate a maker space in a local community. Because I see it as one of the most productive ways of developing neighborhood community, especially with young men and women.

Young men and women, I'm convinced, are wired to learn. And yet most of the schooling that they are exposed to is designed to destroy their desire to learn. But if you can give young men and women opportunities to engage with equipment, et cetera, then I think that you can have the ability to help and to impact.

And that can incubate new businesses. It can incubate a new business for a 14-year-old who has an idea and starts designing t-shirts and selling t-shirts. And that can be a way for a 14-year-old to earn thousands and thousands of dollars that they can't earn if they go and take some dead-end job working in a retail establishment.

Or it can be a way to incubate a new business for somebody who's struggling. Joe Smith just got out of jail, and he can't find anyone who will give him a job. But he can come in and pay $50 a month to rent a membership, to get a membership in the maker space, and can start building cabinets.

And Joe Smith can get away from the difficulty of getting a job after getting out of prison, but can now engage in productive work to actually do something interesting. And so-- sorry, to do something that serves people, building cabinets. He doesn't have to go and buy all the woodworking tools himself and go into debt.

He just needs to buy the membership. And so I think a maker space is one of the most powerful ways that you can provide tools that could help a community. So why did I ask about family? Well, what stage are you at with your family? I think about my children, and I think, well, I'd like for my children to have access to all of these things.

After all, wouldn't it be great if my children had a couple of 3D printers, and computers, and CNC machines, and woodworking tools, et cetera? Well, if I'm going to start writing checks and stashing all that stuff in my garage, I have the problem of that being a very expensive endeavor and basically having no help.

But if I start a maker space, I can equip that maker space with dozens and dozens and dozens of tools. And the development of that maker space, with a properly accompanied business plan, et cetera, the purchase of all those tools are now going to be on the business side of the ledger instead of the consumption side of the ledger.

And now I can equip this, and my children can have memberships. And so this is the kind of thing, this is the kind of business that I would look at. And I would say, this allows me to have the opportunity to solve some pressing needs. What are these young men and women going to do with their time?

Instead of sitting around and getting depressed, staring at a screen, let's harness that productive energy. Let's facilitate the growth of businesses. Let's facilitate the growth of entrepreneurship. And then by developing a community around that, now we have a platform that could be used to accomplish other good things. So now we can provide lectures.

Now we can provide personal finance lectures and budgeting lectures. And now I have a facility where instead of me trying to go out and figure out how to rent a hotel room to give my budgeting lectures to help poor people in my town, I can invite people into my maker space.

And now, in addition to the budgeting lecture, I can say, listen, we'll help you start a business. And I can provide entrepreneurship coaching. And I can find all of those retirees in the community who are just sitting around doing nothing, playing golf all day. And I can say, why don't you come in?

And would you come in and help mentor some of the new aspiring entrepreneurs? And I can bring in people like that. And they can volunteer their time. And they can help. And we can start to create a business culture. And in the same way, I can facilitate. We can use the facility for religious meetings on the weekend.

We can host seminars to help people on everything. And now I have a space that can serve as a community hub. And so I get the benefits of having a place for my children to be with their friends, to build community in the local area, to preach the gospel, to help people build wealth.

I can do seminars. I can have a library of books that are just not going to be available at the library. And so that's the kind of business that I would pursue that I think is one of those where you can tick multiple boxes off. You can have a lot of opportunities.

And it's good for me. It can be very-- it could be very profitable. You'd have to run it. And I think that depending on-- to see what kind of profit margin there is with it. But there could be ways to be very profitable. And then I would leverage that type of thing with my own personal investing.

So I would seek to be an investor in any kind of business that was incubated there in the local community. So just like-- what's his name out in California? Just like the people do when they incubate tech businesses, Russell Graham or whomever, when they incubate a tech business, they're trying to invest and advise.

I want to do the same thing in my local community. I can't-- I don't-- the tech business-- like, that's not me. I don't care about that. Maybe you do, in which case you can go do that. But I can incubate the cabinet maker. I can incubate the new real estate investors.

I can help them. I can help the 14-year-old with a screen printing business. That's within my circle of competence. And so if I'm looking and saying, well, how do I start-- how do I invest my money? I would look at something like that. And I would say, OK, what do I need?

$100,000, a couple hundred thousand dollars. And there's no reason why the whole thing can't be a win-win across the board. So I'll buy a warehouse. And I'll make sure there's an office building next to that. Well, those can be good real estate investments. And I'll open a co-working space in the office building.

And then I'll set up the maker space in the warehouse. And it's the kind of investment that gives multiple benefits. It can be profitable, can lead to community building. It has huge opportunities. Another example of something that I personally would do is I would try to find a business that has a lot of low-level employees specifically with an appeal towards men.

One of the biggest groups of people that are being left behind, as I record this, is groups of men, especially men without high school degrees or who just aren't academically oriented. And I think one of the best things that could happen is for somebody to get involved and to start investing in building businesses and that kind of thing.

So here, you need to think of something that's physically demanding, something that is basic. Think of just basic labor types of things. You can do this in a construction business. You can do this in something like a landscaping business. You can do this in something like a tire shop, this type of business.

But I would try to develop a business and invest in a business that has a lot of young men as employees because then it gives me the chance to do very well financially. Some of these businesses can be incredibly profitable. By going into these kinds of unpopular businesses, you have-- I mean, what's your competition?

You don't have-- if you go into the tech business, you've got cutthroat, very smart people competing with you. You go and you start a tire shop, you don't have cutthroat competition generally. But you have the opportunity to do well financially. Some of these things can be very profitable. I've worked with people in the industry that can be very profitable.

But yet, you have the opportunity to hire dozens and dozens of men. Now, think about the impact now when you're going to work. And let's say that you've got 20 young men who work for you, who you can now structure your business, opening a range of pizza franchises. Now you have the opportunity to, in addition to having the basics of the job, but you have the opportunity to teach life skills.

You have the opportunity to hire somebody who's failing in life, who has no future, no possibility, and bring them in. And through work, they can develop character. They can learn knowledge. You can facilitate education for them. And that can be done through business. I would also pursue things in the world of education and schooling.

I'm convinced that the market is wide open for new opportunities and new approaches towards education for young people. We're stuck with all of these models from the 1300s, the 1500s, these insane models of factory schooling, which are destroying people. But although there is a huge opportunity available in the world of homeschooling, most parents aren't taking the time, aren't going to have the ability or the resources or the self-confidence or the vision to actually homeschool.

But yet there is an opportunity for new and innovative methods of schooling that aren't traditional factory schooling, that aren't traditional government sweatshops, but that actually help people to learn and develop skills for the new world that we're going into. And then I think there are some ways that could be a hybrid model where they could be done very, very profitably, where it's not homeschooling, but it's not expensive private schooling that you pay teachers tens of thousands of dollars.

There's a bunch of interesting things. So those are just a few that I'm not likely to pursue right now. I'm going to keep a couple of my other ones close to the vest. But those are the kinds of things that I would personally look at. But it's not a financial thing.

It's a matter of looking at it and saying, how do I actually do something and invest my money profitably so in addition to the financial return, we also get a people return? Because at the end of the day, who cares about the money? What we should care about is the people.

And yet, that doesn't mean that the money is not important. It just means that we've got to get out of just measuring everything by virtue of finances and think about how do we establish productive systems that will make a difference. Is the difference between a business or an industry that's renewable versus one that's just destructive?

You can go in and you can slice the top of a mountain off and you can pull a bunch of natural resources out of that mountain. Well, that's fine for a time. But is there a way where instead of just simply going in and destroying something without a plan to make it better, is there a way that you can farm something and develop something where it's actually going to grow and be productive?

That's the best I got. I don't have any more answers. I never intended to start a series of shows on this because I've just been busy working on it in my own life, trying to find ways to actually do it. And it's tough. It's not easy. But if more of us who have money would actually start to work on it and start to develop opportunities, and more of us would actually start to think broader than just how much money can I put in the 401(k), I think we can make some major changes.

And that would be the type of thing that I would like to see more and more of. It's one thing to sit around and whine and belly ache about what other people should do and why the government is all wrong. It's another thing to actually roll up your sleeves and say, I've got this money.

I've saved a few hundred thousand dollars. I'm going to go ahead and do this. And I'm going to make this happen. And when more of us start doing that, then I think there'd be a lot less need to belly ache about what the government is doing or not doing and trying to coerce people.

It's our responsibility to take action. Thank you for listening to today's show. If you'd like to join in access to next week's Q&A, go to patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance, patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance. Sign up to support the show there. And I would be happy to speak with you next week on anything you would like to talk about.

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