RPF0675-Friday_QA-Buying_a_Business_Minority_Shareholder_Gifting_a_Rental_Refinancing_Mortgage

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That's FijiAirways.com. From here to happy. Flying direct with Fiji Airways. It's Friday, live 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.

My name is Joshua, and any Friday that I can make it happen, where I'm sitting at a computer and I'm not traveling and I have a decent internet connection, etc., blah, blah, blah, any Friday that I can make those things happen, we host a live Q&A, and that is what's on deck for today.

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Today we have, looks like, five callers on the line, and we go first to Lou in Toronto. Lou, welcome to the show. How can I serve you today, sir? Louie (00:00): Hey, Josh. I want to get some advice on some of my plans for next year. I'm looking to buy a business early next year.

I'm currently going through the process of selling an investment property to raise equity for that. My question is more around the timing in the new year. I've got a few different ideas that I wanted to get your opinion on. First off would be, I continue in my current job.

I conduct my search nights and weekends. And once I have something lined up and ready to pull the trigger on, then I'd go and quit my job and then start this new venture. The other option I was looking at is waiting for the new year. I get my year in bonus.

I then quit, or actually go on, I have the option of going on maternity leave, which is a nice little bonus. So I'd have some income coming in and conduct my search full time. And once I have something lined up, then obviously go into that full time. The third option is something similar, except when I'd quit, I'd take a month off.

I would go back and visit family for a month and then dive into the search full time from there. And obviously there's risks and benefits for all those options. In terms of some other details around me, I'm the provider for the family. My wife stayed at home. So taking that time off does really impact.

We would have some maternity income, which would be about $500 a week versus about $1,500 a week for our regular income. In terms of our net worth and stuff like that, we're probably around about $500,000 looking at equity for the business, so about $300,000. So liquidity and cashflow of $100,000 and then retaining 20% or $100,000 in equity in the home.

And how much are you currently earning at your job? It's about $110,000 gross. It ends up being about $1,500 a week. Would you be able to effectively conduct a search for the type of business you're planning to move into on nights and weekends? That is a tricky question. I sort of struggled with that.

I think I could. It would be a lot more work. Part of the thing that sort of weighs on me with that would be perhaps you're missing out on the opportunity by not investing yourself full time in that search. Or possibly the deal that you end up making isn't as of higher quality as what you could have if you did invest all your time and all your focus into that.

On the flip side, I can also see, well, if you're doing nothing but that, you'd kind of feel a bit of pressure to get something rolling, which maybe is less than ideal as well. Right. Yeah, I think your analysis there is spot on. And to me, that would be a big, big deal.

If you're the sole income earner for your family, obviously you have some money saved so that can get you through a time. But if you're the sole income earner for your family, you quit your job and you focus exclusively on finding a business, you can't make business deals pop out of the woodwork.

They occur when they occur naturally in the cycle of the current owner, etc. And just from a negotiating perspective, if the current owner knows that you've been looking for a business for a while, you quit your job, you've got to have something, that's a big negotiating chip in their favor versus you're well employed, you're making lots of money, you're looking for a business and you're serious about it, but you don't have to have this one.

You've got some other candidates, etc. And I'm not sure that when you talk about looking for a business, I don't think we need to go into the details of the specific type of business, I'm not sure how you could actually invest 50, 60 hours a week into looking for a business.

Could you profitably invest 50 to 60 hours a week into looking for the kind of business that you want to move into? That is a great question. I could definitely see that being hard to do. I do see the benefit though of, as opposed to sort of like the online and telephone inquiries and getting information that way, you would have more time to set up meetings and sort of create the network with brokers and in that space, which could lead to better quality deals that haven't actually hit the market yet.

Does your job allow you normal levels of flexibility where you could take a midday meeting if you came in a little bit early, you could take some lunches, you could take a day off here or there if you needed to, or is it a hardcore, you've got to be here nine to five every day kind of job?

It does have that flexibility. It is sort of like a middle management type role. Taking that time off does, that work doesn't disappear as opposed to say, say for a shift work where you take the time off, it has to be covered by someone else. That could be done, but then it's also, it is tricky trying to balance that work.

Have you and your wife already had the baby or is the baby expected at a certain time? She's been a month old now. So you can still take off maternity leave now? Yes. Yes, I'm up in Canada. So it's a year maternity leave. So and say in about four months time I took maternity leave, I would still have eight months maternity leave available to me.

But you don't get paid during maternity leave or do you? I would get about $500 a week as opposed to about $1,500 of regular income. So the income is not such a, so important specifically because you are, you're implying that you're positioned either way. You know, you're considering completely quitting, taking a month off, visiting family, etc.

So certainly unless there's some really compelling thing that you really want to do with option three, I don't think you should go with option three. Why quit if you don't have to? At the very least you could hedge your bets and use maternity leave. But there's not, probably not any reason to really quit.

And with a month old baby. I'm sorry, I didn't actually mean, when I mean quit, I would in either a scenario would take maternity leave. And then I have the option of coming back if things did go pear-shaped. Right, right. If it were me, I think I would do it nights and weekends.

And I would schedule a day off, schedule a half a day, every couple of weeks to do those interviews, to do that networking, etc. Now very clearly that could raise your profile at work. If you are not accustomed to taking those times away from the office during the day, now all of a sudden you're gone for two hours here, you're gone for a half a day there.

It's certainly possible that they would say, are you looking for another job? But that's probably not a big concern for you, even if that were the case. But I think that, I think my option would go in option number one. If you are earning, you know, let's just do the math here.

If you are earning $115,000 per year, ignore taxes, let's just say $75,000 net of taxes, $75,000 to $100,000 net of taxes. If you're in a position where you would consider simply stopping work and living on savings while looking for a business, then that basically implies that you could save virtually, you know, in a sense, all $75,000 or $100,000.

Well at a net worth of $500,000, for you to be able to save $100,000 over a year of working would be a huge deal. It's a dramatic increase in your net wealth. So it's not like the income is unimportant to you. So I would keep the income coming in, save like crazy, keep my expenses as low as possible, and look diligently at nights and on weekends for the type of business opportunity, and then schedule in the time that I need during the work week.

I wouldn't sacrifice to not be able to take those midday meetings and just do everything online. But it's hard for me to imagine how you could productively employ 50 to 60 hours a week looking for a business. I can understand how you could employ 20 hours a week looking for a business.

I can understand how you could employ 10 hours a week, you know, doing interviews or doing due diligence, etc. But I think you could work that around your job and the extra money will be helpful to you when you do find the business. And I think it puts you in a much stronger negotiating position with the business seller.

It also potentially puts you in a better financing position where you have an income. So if you need to borrow money, you have an income, it's easier for you to borrow money when you have an income than when you're unemployed. And it takes the bear off of your back of saying, "I've got to get this business.

I've got to make this deal work," which you know as well as I do, that's when you make a bad deal. So I would go with number one until I were convinced that I had to do something different. And then if you're convinced that you have to do something different, then maybe go to maternity leave and go to that option as well.

But the goal of course, do it, find something as quickly as possible, then you can make the transition as quickly as possible. But I wouldn't quit. Not with a new baby, not with a wife at home, not without a business in hand, I wouldn't quit. Okay. Thanks, Josh. Yeah, my pleasure.

All right, we go now to Dave in New York City. Dave, welcome to Radical Personal Finance. How can I serve you today, sir? Hey, Josh. Thank you. Can you hear me? Yes, sir. Sounds good. I have a similar question about a potential purchase into a business. My questions for you are, I'm an employee and I have an opportunity to buy a minority interest in the business.

I've been there for eight years or so. And what are your thoughts on what are some of the key protections you might advise somebody when entering into this kind of deal? Secondly, if you had any thoughts about persuasion, discussion, negotiation for why selling equity to some employees would be beneficial.

And like the prior caller, some of the funding options, if any of those, if you feel like you have any insight on any of those three, I'd love to hear them. In terms of your process of buying in, what is the deal that's been offered you? We don't have a structure yet other than this is something that was on the table as part of like the opportunity come join this business, help us grow it.

And now we're at the stage where we're now, the owner has said, I'm interested in pursuing this. Let's figure out some ways to do so. And so it's a relatively blank canvas. Do you think that this kind of opportunity would ever result in your moving into a majority ownership stake?

No. So if that's the case, then in a way, there's really no point in looking at this as a business owner. This is basically a form of incentive-based compensation. The idea being that you'll be more closely tied to the business and you have an opportunity to share in the profits of the company.

But if you're only going to be a minority owner, then there's not going to be any, you're not ultimately going to have control of the business. How many other owners are there currently? There's currently one owner who recently bought out, there were two partners, the current owner as 100% and earlier this year bought out the other partner.

And the idea was with the second partner gone, there's opportunities for us too. And then there'd be three employees, myself included, who would potentially be stepping into that other position. And what's the nature of the business? It's a training company. Okay. Okay, great. So here's how I look at it.

If you've got one majority partner in a company that doesn't have a lot of significant assets or equipment, et cetera, and if you expect that current majority owner to continue as an owner, then you're never going to wind up controlling this business. This is not the kind of thing that you're going to wind up controlling.

So just think about it like a form of incentive-based compensation. That's really all it is. You aren't going to have any real input in the decisions. Yes, you can offer your opinion, maybe there'll be some change in status if the lead owner has a company meeting and says, "Let's talk to the partners." Yeah, they'll listen to you, but probably he's listening to you now.

So is that going to be that big of a difference? I don't see it. And if you don't think you're going to grow into a majority owner at some point yourself, then this isn't really owning a business. This is having a minority stake in a business. So you analyze it on that basis.

It's great, absolutely, to have a minority stake, but you analyze it differently than something that you can control. So with this case, you look at it and say, "Will my compensation go up based upon having a stake in the business?" And it might be, right? The idea from the owner's perspective, if I own 100% of a company, why would I give away some percentage of my ownership in that situation as a business owner?

The number one reason I want to do that is I want to create increased loyalty on behalf of my employees, and I want a way to compensate them on their productivity rather than with a promise. So the loyalty thing is a big deal, because for the owner of a company, the hardest thing that they have to do is to find good employees who work well in the company.

And so you want to do everything you can as the owner of a business to get your good employees to be connected to you very tightly. In the financial planning world, we call it golden handcuffs. And so you create programs that are going to put golden handcuffs around the wrists of your employees.

You create some form of deferred compensation plan so that when they're thinking about going somewhere else, but they recognize, "I'm not vested in a pension yet, but I'm going to vest in a couple of years," then they say, "Well, I'll go ahead and vest in this pension." You build perks into the job that would be hard for them to replace, and you try to make sure that they have a long stake in it.

Now, the easiest plan, the easiest way for me as a business owner to put golden handcuffs around my employee is to give them a minority stake in the business, because now they're going to share in the profits of the business, but I'm off the hook for any kind of promises.

If I make a specific promise of a deferred compensation program that I have to fund, and my share of that funding is $100,000 per year, I've created a cash flow liability of $100,000 per year. But if I create a share of ownership that you would expect that your share of the profits of the company is $100,000 per year, I only have to pay you that share of ownership if we actually produce the $100,000 of profit, the extra $100,000 of profit that would, on a pro rata basis, to your shares.

That's the basic reason that I, as a business owner, would be trying to do that, would be trying to create that opportunity for you, is I want to create loyalty and put golden handcuffs around my employees' wrists so that they will be incentivized to stay with me longer. So now let's flip and let's talk about it from your perspective.

Is that a good thing to do? Well, the answer is, is that the best deal that you can get? Certainly, if you're making $300,000 per year today, and the boss says, "Tell you what, I'm going to give you 10% of the company, and your 10% stake would make you an extra $100,000 per year at the current profit margin, etc.," and the boss is just giving you that as a gift, now your income is going to go up to $400,000.

Well, of course, why not? There's no reason not to accept that, because even though you are now a minority shareholder, you're not stuck at the company. You could leave, you can go somewhere else, and now you can just simply take your share of the profits, whether or not you're working there or not.

So there's no reason not to take it. Now if there's a buy-in process of some kind, then it becomes a little bit more difficult. If you have to buy in, if you have to pay, if you have to create some difference other than just simply your labor, now you have to assess what's going to be the long-term value of this company and of these shares of the company based upon my buy-in.

Your analysis there would be, number one, how much is it going to cost me versus what am I going to get? So if it's going to cost me $100,000 to buy in over the next year, and then I create $100,000 per year of extra money, well, it's worth considering it.

But where is the profits of the company going to go? Are they going to go up, going to go down, et cetera? And then the second thing is, what's going to be my protection? Because with a small private company, you don't have any ability to control the direction of the company.

The owner gives you and the other three employees 20%, but now dies. And now his widow is caring for the company or gets divorced. And now all of a sudden you're in business with someone else. And if you have a company that's just a small company that doesn't have a lot of plants, a lot of equipment, a lot of big professional management, as most smaller companies are, there's a good chance that company dies with the death or the disability of something of the founder.

So could you be getting in at the entry level of a Coca-Cola? Certainly you could. But it sounds like that's probably not the kind of company that you're working for. So as far as I'm concerned, you look at it and say, is this the best deal that you can get?

In some ways, you're better off getting a deal of more guaranteed compensation or you're better off getting a deal, sometimes a deal where you have a more direct scenario. For example, if I knew I was never going to become a majority owner, would I rather just have a different commission structure based upon my actual productivity versus a share in the profits of the company?

Maybe. You'd have to look at the numbers. But it's hard for you to say what's going to happen with the profits of the company. Profits are dependent upon the expenses of the company, and you don't have control over that necessarily. Whereas if you have a direct commission structure that's paid to you based upon your activity, that can open up a little bit more.

So that's how I would analyze it and think it through. Not a bad thing, but this isn't going to be the kind of thing where you're going to ultimately control the company. It's just a matter of, is this the best deal you can get? Right. And along that line of what is the cost versus what do I get, if we are a profitable company, so you can look at, in that regard, you could look at this as what are the returns that I can expect and project as best I can having my money in this business, my business, or the business I'm operating in, versus invested in the market at large.

Is that a reasonable way to think about this? I think it is, as long as you adjust for risk, certainly. It can be a wonderful thing and a wonderful investment for you, especially if the business is on a growth path. Let's say that now there's one owner, but there's three key employees, but the owner has plans to quadruple the size of the company, and he wants you and the other three employees to participate in that.

Well, if you can quadruple the size of the company, and now you own 10% of a company that's quadrupled in size, that could be an extremely wonderful return. And definitely, without question, if the owner has growth plans like that, and you're a key part of them, it could be, without question, one of the best investments you could make, because now you're leveraging the work, labor, and productivity of other people, of a larger growing company.

And even if you never control the company, that could be a tremendous financial benefit for you. And yes, without question, you should compare that to all of the other investment opportunities you have. And it better be a way higher return than when you get buying GE stock on the stock market, because a small business has a lot more room to grow, usually.

It can, and you can have a much bigger stake. And so yeah, it certainly is much more impactful. But there's a very different risk profile between your having some shares of a very large company that has professional management, etc., versus you're having the shares of a company that is probably very dependent on a few key people, and is working in a much smaller market that could change at any time.

So I wouldn't compare them exactly, but I would pursue, without question, the smaller business and the productivity of that, even if it did cost me some money. >>Toby: Great. All right, great. Thanks for all this insight. I really appreciate all you do. >>Steve: My pleasure. I don't know if there's any specific suggestions at this point on the actual structure, the details.

You'll hammer that out with the owner and with the lawyers. I think the biggest thing that I would want to see is simply fair negotiations, and a lot of openness, and a lot of clear, honest communication, and making sure that everybody understands the incentives in place. You want a win-win deal.

You want to make sure that the owner does not... You need the owner to feel like he's getting the better end of the deal, because now his team is being enhanced. You don't want him to feel like he's getting the worse end of the deal, because he's lost 30% of his company.

You want to make sure that you feel like you're getting the better end of the deal, where now you're participating in the profits of the company instead of just having a higher salary. Which, from a tax planning perspective, by the way, I guess we should mention that, certainly it can be much better for you to be a partial owner of the company than just to receive more earned income.

You may be able to put in place some interesting executive benefit programs as an owner of the company or a key employee that you may or may not have access to right now. Think about that. I think you're a little bit premature on the tax planning. We go now to Mark in Texas.

Mark, welcome to the show. How can I serve you today, sir? Mark Cunningham Hi, Joshua. Good to talk to you. Thanks for all you do. My pleasure. Can you hear me? Yes, go ahead. Sounds good. Okay, good. My dad has had a couple of rental properties for years and years.

He's been making noise for a few years about getting rid of those and getting out of that phase, part of his financial life. He's decided to transfer ownership of this one house to my sister and myself. This house is a rental house in a suburb about 30 minutes away from where I live.

Its value is $160,000. The current renter is moving out. He's been using a property management company and he's been very hands-off, letting them handle most everything. His CPA, I think, has advised him that to transfer it to us would save about a $25,000 tax bill that he will have to pay if he sells it himself and takes the proceeds.

He's also been helping us pay for some college tuition for our kids. He's thinking that this will also be the funding for some of that ongoing tuition stuff for my side. It doesn't affect my sister. There's that objective thing that we're checking as well. I'm just looking to see if we turn around and sell the property after it's transferred to us, am I foregoing any great opportunities in particular to transact this all in this way?

I am open. I like the idea of having rental property, but this has come on suddenly and I don't know that I'm prepared to take on this house. It may need some significant updating or repairs. Just want to see where you go with this. How old is your dad?

My dad is 78. Do you know about what his basis in the property is? I think it's around $100,000. Do you know what your dad's total income is or his marginal tax bracket? Is it high, higher than yours, low, lower than yours? Higher than mine. It's probably at the 25 to 32 range, somewhere in there.

He's retired. How much is your dad's net worth? It's probably a million two. Let's talk just about the one property first. If your dad sells the property right now, he's going to ... Let's just assume that his adjusted basis on the property is $100,000. That may or may not be true.

It's probably not. It's probably his adjusted basis is lower because of the fact that you said his accountant says he's going to have a $25,000 tax bill. It would be pretty unusual if the property has $160,000 value but his true basis is $100,000. I don't see why we would lose $25,000 of taxes.

Most likely, his adjusted basis is much lower than $100,000 for some reason. There's going to be additional recapture of gains that's different. For the sake of our discussion, I'm going to use that $100,000 and $160,000 number so you understand the principle. Let's go through some scenarios. Scenario number one is your dad just simply sells the property.

He's going to sell the property and he's going to have $60,000 of capital gain. If he has $60,000 of capital gain, he's going to pay long-term capital gains taxes on that $60,000. Let's assume that he winds up netting $125,000 number. Let's say that he nets $135,000 of cash after the sale.

At this point in time, with $135,000 of cash, he can give you and your sister each $70,000 of cash. He gives it to you guys. He's still well under his lifetime gifting amounts for gifting exclusion, file a gift tax return, but he gives you guys each $70,000 cash. You walk away free and clear.

That's the first thing. Make sense? >> Steven: Yep. >> Adam: Okay. Now, option two is going to be if he gives you the house. Let's say that he gives you and your sister the house. He deeds it over to you. Well, you're going to inherit the property, but you're going to keep the basis of the property as it's given to you.

You have $100,000- >> Steven: Current value? >> Adam: Sorry? >> Steven: Current value? >> Adam: No, the basis. You will inherit his tax basis. He's going to give you the property. It's worth $160,000, but he has $100,000 tax basis in the property. He gives it to you. You and your sister put it on the market.

You sell it for $160,000. Now, you have a $60,000 capital gain. You're going to pay capital gains taxes on the $60,000, you and your sister, at long-term capital gains rates. You're going to pay the same amount of taxes probably that he is, unless there's some dramatic difference in your effective bracket, depending on which long-term capital gains tax bracket you're in, etc.

I don't see that there's a big win there either way. It really isn't going to be that big of a difference one way or the other because when you get the property as a gift from him, you don't get a step up in tax basis. >> Steven: Okay, I thought you did.

>> Adam: No, you don't. You don't, not as a gift. Now, how could you get a step up in tax basis? Well, your dad can continue to own the property and then he can keep it until he dies. And then when he dies, he can leave you the property in his will.

And in that situation, if he leaves you the property in his will, then he can put himself ... So let's just assume that your dad keeps the property. Three years from now, he dies. The property is sold. Now as the executive's will, you sell the property for $180,000. At that point in time, you have $180,000 that you split with your sister and there's no capital gains taxes paid in that scenario.

So the only way to get a step up in tax basis for this property is for him to continue owning the property until he dies. Now, I don't know if he should do that or not, but I'll tell you here are some ideas, some ways that you could do that, that you could make this work if he wanted to keep owning it.

The first thing I would say is that if he's just simply tired of managing it, let's say it's a good property, but he's tired of managing it, then you can start a property management company and/or your children who are in college can start a property management company and you can make an agreement with him to manage the property for him in exchange for a management fee.

And that I think would be a really good idea. I would much rather have your children start a small property management company under his tutelage and then they receive 10% of the rents on the property as compensation rather than them just simply getting money and being given money for their college tuition.

You can do the same thing. And there would be substantial tax benefits for you and for your children in having a property management business. It could be the seed of a bigger business and you can have other clients that you also manage property for and it could provide you with the ability to try out being a landlord without having to go and actually buy the property.

This could be a good way for you to see do you yourself want to be a landlord or not. That would be one way of accessing some of the money in it. The next thing is let's say you say, "Well, 10% of the rents is not going to solve our problem.

What we need is we need $30,000 to pay a college tuition bill." Well, your dad can just simply take out a $30,000 mortgage on the property. He takes out a $30,000 mortgage. Then he can give you $30,000 as a gift and then in time he will let his tenants pay down that mortgage again.

So then he can continue to own the property. He gives you the gift. You receive the gift of $30,000 tax-free. The property stays in his name. He continues to own it. Then when he dies, the property receives a step-up in tax basis and you inherit the property at the higher level with no taxes due.

So that would be one way of accessing the equity in the property as well. So it all depends on what do you need. Is the property worth keeping? Do you need a lump sum of money? Do you need an income? Or is it better just we pay the tax and be done with it?

But that's how I would analyze it. >>Ted: Okay. Yeah, I mean he's got the flexibility that he can give the money. He doesn't have to get a mortgage for it. He just thought this was going to kill two birds with one stone and get him out of it and while dealing with the cash flow and giving part of his estate to us two kids at the same time.

But without the step-up, it's... Go ahead. >>Steve: No. Yeah, you're not going to get the step-up on a long-term capital gain asset until he dies and so you have to wait for his death to get the step-up. So I guess just one more thing. Again, you and he can decide whether all these moves are worth it and in the long-term best interest of him and you and the whole family because sometimes it's best just to go ahead and pay the bill and pay the tax bill.

But one other thing that you could do, just by way of example, are your children in the same town as this property? >>Ted: Two out of three. >>Steve: Okay. >>Ted: Are in school here. >>Steve: And are you in... You live in the same town as this property? >>Ted: Yes.

>>Steve: Okay. >>Ted: About 30 minutes away, yeah. >>Steve: So the other option that he could do... Let's say our number one most important goal is to avoid paying the tax. We don't want to pay the capital gains taxes on the asset. That's our goal. Well, the other solution is if you say this particular property isn't a property that he necessarily wants to keep owning but there might be another property that would be a better property, then he could do a 1031 exchange from this property into another property.

So let's say that what he actually says is, "This single family house is not the kind of property that I want to leave, but what I'd like to do is I'd like to buy a quadplex. And the benefit of buying a quadplex that's here is I can get a good deal on one, and now my college-age grandchildren can use this as a component of their property management company." So yes, they'll be managing four tenants instead of one, but I want to do this because I want to help them to start to learn the property business, and my son's going to be partaking in it as well, and it'll be a good learning experience all around, a good business all around.

So what he does is he sells this property for $160,000. He does a 1031 exchange of the $160,000 into the quad, and maybe this is the down payment on it, and then he continues to own the quad until his death. Meanwhile, you and your children set up a property management company.

You manage the property in exchange for a percentage of the rents, so that allows you to gain income from the property, and then it also allows you to use this business as a way to shelter appropriate business expenses, et cetera. Maybe you can get some other clients as well.

This allows you to get your feet wet and your children their feet wet in the rental business, and then he just simply leaves it to you in his will. Now let's say he pays $300,000 for the quad, but it grows to be $400,000 at the time of his death.

Now you inherit the $400,000 quadruplex. Maybe the mortgage is paid down by now, and you've received an increase from a tax-free increase from $100,000 to $400,000, and all of that gain, $300,000, is received by you income tax-free. You don't get the step-up in tax basis unless he owns it to the date of his death.

Your tools are, number one, take a mortgage against the property if he needs cash. Mortgage because it's debt. Mortgages always come to you with no income taxes. And then with real estate, if it's profitably rented out, this is the best strategy because mortgages on real estate are low interest.

You can be fixed interest, and the tenant can pay them off. You can deduct the interest expenses, et cetera, and/or use the property and set up a property management company and charge property management fees to take a little bit of the income off for your family. Those are the most tax-efficient options that I can come up with for you.

Okay. All right. Very good. My pleasure. Anything else? Lots to think about. Thank you. Great. That'll do it. Okay. Thank you. We move now to Jason in Kentucky. Jason, welcome to Radical Personal Finance. How can I serve you today, sir? Hi, Joshua. How's it going? Very well, sir. Go ahead.

I'm actually in Cincinnati, right up the river. We'll take it. So Jason in Ohio. Welcome. Yeah. Yeah. So I used to live in Louisville, of course. So I have two items, both related to home ownership. So we have a baby on the way coming end of December. And I'm going to be taking care of her.

So I'm going to be taking care of her. And I'm going to be taking care of her. And I'm going to be taking care of her. And I'm going to be taking care of her. And I'm going to be taking care of her. And I'm going to be taking care of her.

And I'm going to be taking care of her. And I'm going to be taking care of her. And I'm going to be taking care of her. And I'm going to be taking care of her. And I'm going to be taking care of her. And I'm going to be taking care of her.

And I'm going to be taking care of her. And I'm going to be taking care of her. And I'm going to be taking care of her. - Okay, so let's talk about skillsets. Let's talk about skills, because that's probably a very accessible word. So the skills would be business analytics and programming.

What other skills does that guy have that you don't currently have? - He'll sell skills. That's one area I've been working on building myself in my current role. And did a little bit of a road block, but yeah. What other skills? I guess if you're talking about management skills, I mean, most of the people are earning higher in some sort of management position, even if they're just managing a few people on a team.

Or like, what's it called? Project management, that's a skillset. - Okay, good. Is there anything else that comes to mind? Anything else that he has that you don't have? - I mean, I think I mentioned competence, but I think that's part of it. Like communication skills. The phrase that's being thrown out a lot is executive presence.

Kind of that way of presenting yourself. I guess it can be learned, but it's... - Okay, so if we had more time, or if I were coaching you one-on-one, I would spend quite a bit of time with you asking you about what you're doing for these things. And asking you what you're doing, etc.

Because of this format, I'm just going to give you some things that I want you to think about and some homework to do. So grab a pen, so you are ready. So this is a good list of things. And by way of reminder, we've said business analytics skills. The ability to look at a business and analyze it.

The ability to look at a spreadsheet and analyze what's happening with the numbers. Programming skills. The ability to actually do a technical function of programming. Sales skills. The ability to close more sales and to close bigger sales. Management skills. The ability to manage and inspire people to a higher level of collective performance.

Project management. The ability to bring a project to fruition in a quick and efficient way. And confidence. Personal confidence, executive presence, and communications skills. The key thing to recognize is that every single one of those things is a skill. It's not something that's inborn in a human being. You don't, you know, when my son came out of the womb, I didn't look down and say, "Oh look, he's a programmer." Right?

No, programming is a learned skill. You don't look at a little child and say, "Oh, look, they've just got such an executive presence." Executive presence is something that is trained. It's a skill. And the key thing is, any skill that somebody else has learned is a skill that you can learn as well.

Now, maybe somebody else learned it easier than you did, or than you can, because they have a better starting place, maybe they're smarter than you are, maybe their parents loved them more than yours did, or maybe they started out behind and they had to work twice as hard as you do to learn something.

But any skill that somebody else has learned is a skill that you can learn. And if you want to increase your income, the simplest and the easiest way for you to start is to start by analyzing the people that are in your company. Look at who is making more in your company, and then try to figure out how do I develop the skills that they have that I don't currently have.

And then go to work on them little by little by little by little. Now, there are other great career strategies that you can employ as well, but the simplest one is just simply look at the people that are in your company. You have a boss, you have a job, you have a work environment that you know.

Look at them and analyze what skills they have. And so here is your homework. The first thing that I would strongly encourage you to do is to choose one person to start with, but ultimately choose a half a dozen people in your company that are your superiors. They're your superiors whether they're direct superiors or somewhere else, but choose people in your company that you admire.

Don't choose the person you don't like, but choose the guy that you admire that you know works well and that you know has skills that you don't have and that you know is making more money. Choose people that are making in your company $100,000 and ask them for lunch and say, "Would you be willing to have lunch with me?" And take them out for lunch.

They'll all say yes. It's no big deal. So you take them out for lunch and specifically say, "I am working hard on developing my skills and I really want to develop more confidence. I really want to be able to progress in my skills at the company. I want to be able to move on in my career.

What advice do you have for me? How did you get..." A good question to start with is, "How did you get where you are? Where did you start from and how did you get where you are?" And ask them what they did to get where they are because if they started out as we all do as little children not knowing anything, but over time they did a certain set of things.

Maybe they got a degree. Maybe they didn't get a degree. Maybe they took a certain job. Maybe they didn't. Maybe they read a book. Maybe they took a class. Whatever they did. If they can tell you how they got where they are and then you do what they did, then it goes to reason that you'll get where they are in time.

But they'll give you much better advice than that. So ask them, "How did you get where you are and what would you recommend that I do to develop the skills that I need to succeed in a job like yours?" And so ask them more questions. They'll give you answers, but take notes.

They might suggest that you read a certain book. You know, "This book here on this kind of programming is the key book." Or, "I took this class on accounting and it really helped me to understand how to read a business balance sheet." Or, "You should go to this sales seminar or listen to this sales podcast." Or, "Here's how I learned management skills," etc.

And ask them for their advice and then make notes of it. And the secret is do what they said. So if they say, "Oh, read this certain book," you immediately go home. You order the book. You read it. And then two weeks later, you go back to them and you say, "I read the book that you gave me.

Would you be willing to go to lunch with me again? I'd like to talk to you about it and ask you some questions from it." Then two weeks later, you go to lunch. And you bring the book with you, which you've marked up, you've highlighted, you've underlined, you've written your questions in it, and you've said, "Here's what I thought was really good," or, "Here are the questions that you have," and you have a conversation with them about the book.

And then you ask them, "What should I do next?" And they say, "You should go take this class." So you go take the class. And then you come back a month later, take them to lunch, go to lunch with them, etc. And you start to build this relationship with them.

And you do what they tell you to do to learn the skills that they have learned. And what happens is, this does a few things. Number one, it starts you on the process of developing the skills that you need to succeed in your job. You read the book on programming, you write the program.

You read the book on sales skills or go to the seminar, and then you start implementing some of the techniques in your business. But you're doing it with someone that's in your company that knows the things that work in your company and the things that don't work in your company.

For example, just as an aside, I used to want to learn how to sell. And so I would read these books on sales. But the problem was that I was in the life insurance business. And so I was reading these books on life insurance sales. And a lot of the people would talk about the importance of what in sales world is called the "one-call close," where what you do is you pressure somebody to make a decision, either a yes or a no decision, and you pressure them to make a decision on the first call.

You don't call back and try to make another call. You do it right there. But I quickly learned that that was completely the wrong advice for the type of business that we did. And I learned I never, I never sold on the first close. Never. Because what would happen is, the market that we were in was so totally different that if I sold on the first close, it was guaranteed to be terrible business.

The stuff that we did was always something where I wanted somebody to take a significant amount of time to think about it and really be sure about what they were doing. It had to make sense. And so closing on the first call may have worked in 1952 when this one guy was selling a $322 life insurance policy, but it was not the right advice in 2010.

And so somebody in your industry would quickly say, "No, no, no, you don't do that." And so you're getting the right advice from people who are in your industry, and they're steering you towards the type of programming or the type of business analytics or the type of sales skills that are helping you.

You're also building a mentoring relationship, and you're bringing yourself to the attention of those who are in leadership in the company. People who are in leadership of the company are desperate to find good employees. They're desperate to find people to replace themselves. Because this guy who's making $100,000, he can't move up until he can find and cultivate his replacement.

That's his job. If you want to move up in a company, your job is to figure out who's going to replace you so that you can move up and be promoted yourself. And so you're putting yourself on the radar screen as a hard worker, as an active go-getter, and as a learner, and as somebody who's coachable and teachable and trainable.

And that's what every coach wants. That's what every company wants, is employees who are coachable, teachable, and trainable. And so the process of simply asking for help and asking for advice has the major benefit of raising your profile and allowing you to be a mentee of the leaders in your company.

And within a company, this is a totally natural and normal function if you just simply take initiative. So the first piece of homework for you is schedule a lunch appointment at least once per week with somebody in your company that you admire. Now, if it's the senior executive vice president, and I don't know how big your company is, and they don't want to take you for lunch, at least say, "Listen, would you be willing to have a few minutes?

I'd like to get some advice from you." I have done this over the years again and again, and I have never had anybody say no. Even at the most, the highest levels. Because people who are successful and highly successful respect people who are willing to take a risk and ask for help.

I always think of it like this. Think back to when you were in high school and how hard it was, probably for you, to ask a girl out. Now today, being 39 years old, you look at that and say, "That's ridiculous." The most obvious thing in the world would have been just simply to be the kind of guy who asked the girl out.

And by simply behaving in a confident way, if you went back to high school, you'd kill it with the girls because you'd just ask them out. There would be no fear. But you in high school had the problem of thinking that it mattered if she said no somehow. But you at 39, you know that's a bunch of bunk.

It's the same thing in business. When you simply ask for help and you ask for advice, and you go right to the top, the guy at the top knows that that's the key skill and is happy to help you. So homework one, schedule a lunch appointment. Plan it at least once a week.

You should, by the way, if you run out of people in your company, you should do exactly the same thing with people that you know in your industry or that you know in your life. Start with a friend of yours, an older person that you know and respect. If you have a competitor at another company that you met at some company function or something like that, ask them to lunch.

Ask them their advice. And if you practice simply being a good student, that will help raise your profile at your job. The second piece of advice I would have for you specifically because you said that confidence has been a challenge for you and that you need more confidence, more executive presence, and more communication skills.

You need to join Toastmasters International. Toastmasters International is the single best way for you to develop personal confidence, executive presence, communication skills, and management skills. You must join Toastmasters International and participate in what they do. And let me explain to you why Toastmasters is such a tremendous opportunity. Number one.

I've done that in a long time, but I need to rejoin Toastmasters. Yeah, rejoin. Rejoin and make it a practice. And probably what you should do is take it beyond just speaking if you didn't take it before. Let me explain how Toastmasters works, especially for people who have never done it.

The basic concept of Toastmasters is to collect a group of people who are all friendly with one another and encouraging who want to learn how to speak in public. Speaking in public is the number one fear that many people have. And yet it's also one of the most important skills that you can have in both career advancement, right?

There's nobody who's an executive of your company that would be uncomfortable standing up at a big meeting and saying, "Hey, here's what I think." So it's important for career advancement, but it's also important for self-confidence. If you can tackle the number one fear that many people have, and you can learn to deal with that fear, to act in spite of that fear, and in time to eliminate that fear, it'll do tremendous amounts of good for your personal self-confidence.

And so they do that by giving you a speaking curriculum and you're learning how to speak. The process of going through the curriculum that Toastmasters offers of learning how to speak in public and learning how to do it in the way they do it in the clubs, and for those who've never been to the clubs, some of it is with prepared speeches, you prepare a five-minute speech.

Some of it is with extemporaneous speaking, where you just simply stand and speak on a question that's asked to you. That process will help you to develop executive presence. Also, you serve in all of the roles of the meeting. So you may have never chaired an important meeting at your job, but at Toastmasters you will chair a meeting, and they'll evaluate you at the end of the meeting on how you did, and they'll evaluate you on your executive presence.

And you learn how to stand still in front of a room, how to take control of a room, how to order a meeting, etc. All of that will contribute to your executive presence. The process of going through it in a friendly environment will build your self-confidence. The process of preparing and delivering speeches, both pre-planned prepared speeches and speaking extemporaneously, will help you to build your communication skills.

And then the major secret of Toastmasters is this. Once you go through the basic level of communications training, you can move into the management track. And they have both a communications track, where you can become a skilled professional public speaker, if that were your ambition, but they also have a management track, where you start by working as the treasurer of a club, or the secretary of a club.

But then you can move on to be the president of your local club. Maybe there's 15 people in your local club, but you now have the chance to be the president of your local club of 15 people. Now, do you think that that experience of managing a club of 15 people, who are all positive, optimistic, want to support you when you make mistakes, etc.

Do you think that that could help you to develop management skills that can be applied in your workspace? Yes, definitely. And here's the thing. Toastmasters gives you a manual on everything that you need to do to become a competent treasurer, or a competent secretary, or a competent manager of a local club.

And then once you serve as the president of your local club for a year, and you have a manual on everything to do, and all of those things directly translate over to your business, to your job, then you become a manager of a region, and you can become the manager of a huge region if you want.

Which, that's the kind of skill that now you're going and, for example, they give you projects. Like one of the projects you would do at one point would be to host a regional conference. And so there'll be a regional conference of 100 speakers coming together, and you'll be the organizer of that conference.

Certainly, you're volunteering your time. Certainly it's going to take several hours a week for you. But once you've put together a regional conference and hosted a regional conference for 100 competitors, and there's 700 people that come to your meeting, and you're standing up in front of the room of 700 people, that will help you to build those management skills, and that will translate over to your job.

So for you, my two things are this. One, do homework assignments of scheduling at least one meeting a lunch, one lunch meeting a week, with somebody that you admire, that you look up to, who makes more money than you do, and who is farther ahead in their career than you are.

Ask them for their advice, and then do what they tell you to do. And then number two, join Toastmasters, go through the communications track, and then get involved in the club management track to build those executive management skills. I've got a lunch meeting already scheduled on Tuesday, so I'm getting started there.

Good. Take a notebook and ask for advice. Jason, thank you for calling in. Congratulations on the birth of your baby, and I'm really glad that you're here, and I appreciate your listening. Yeah, thanks, Josh. All right, we finish out today with Shiv in Washington. Shiv, welcome to Radical Personal Finance.

How can I serve you today, sir? Hey, Josh. Thanks for taking my call, and of course, thanks for everything, especially your recent episode on how to read books. It has helped me a lot. Good. With the question, in short, I have some confusion about how to diversify investment distribution between stock position and real estate.

A bit of detail, I have a mortgage balance, and I have a single stock exposure in my portfolio in excess of a couple hundred thousand dollars. The stock has done really well in recent past, but I'm concerned now due to the market wipe and recession is coming, all those sort of things.

I'm confused. Should I sell my stock or I mortgage, or should I keep holding the stock more, which has done phenomenal for me? How do I decide? I know I'm alluding to market timing here, but it's making me restless these days, and I also know that this is an appropriate question for a financial advisor, but I'm trying to learn that process to do myself DIY, and I would like to know how financial advisor thinks about it.

So, the first thing is you should pay attention to the fact that you're feeling restless. One of the things that I don't like is when people think that they should ignore how they feel about, especially when it results in your money, because at the end of the day, it's your money, and you're the one who cares more than anybody else what happens with it.

And so, if you feel concerned and you feel restless about something, you should pay attention to that. Doesn't necessarily mean you should sell, it just means you should pay attention. And you gotta go back and analyze that and say why do I feel restless? Am I exposed here? Have I made a bad decision?

Or is this just simply an emotional response to the news that I'm taking in, and I need to go back and look, what's my core strategy? What do I own? Why do I own it? How confident do I feel about the future of this, etc.? And go with that process there.

But you need to start by homing in on why do you actually feel restless and analyze that. So, do you have a clear plan that you are pursuing to... Do you have a clear plan that you're pursuing at this point in time? So, in short, my plan is to pay down the mortgage and have a chance to reach my 4% goal and then move out of job and do the gigs.

I haven't decided what the gigs are. But right now I'm in a good place. My sole purpose from that income is to pay down my debt. The only debt I have is mortgage and build portfolio. So, you mentioned real estate. Why are you attracted to investing in real estate?

Real estate... Right now, real estate is my house. So, I'm not like I have done research on real estate or something. It's just that I have bought a house, so that's why I... Okay. We're having a little bit of connection issue, which is making it a little bit hard to hear everything you're saying.

The question that you're asking is fundamentally unanswerable because you don't have a specific scenario that you're presenting. I don't know whether stocks are going to go up or whether stocks are going to go down. I don't know whether we're going to go into a deep, dark, long, hard recession and depression for the next 10 years or we're going to go into the next greatest thing.

Every politician wants me to believe one extreme or the other. I don't know. I don't know what investment strategy you should pursue in stocks or if you should pursue a strategy of real estate, etc. I don't know. But what I do know is that you can work your way through the scenarios by thinking them through and then comparing those scenarios to your current plans and to your current strategy.

So, the first thing I would look at is what are my goals? What are my ultimate goals that I'm trying to work towards with my finances? What am I trying to fund? Now, you mentioned that you're trying to fund financial independence. I would say, "What does financial independence mean to me?" You've got a number.

That's what you've calculated, etc. I would ask myself, "What would I do when I hit that number? Is there any way that I can get there faster?" If you are well-employed at a job that you like and your primary strategy for hitting financial independence is to own stocks and your number is a few years out and you have an investment plan that is solid, then you don't worry about the market going down because the market's going to go down.

That's what happens. You get a 30% correction every decade. You get a 15% correction every downturn every year. You get a 50% correction every couple decades. That's what's going to happen. And so, you know that I'm going to be in a situation where I'm going to keep working. I've got a job that's fine.

I'm saving lots of money. And what I would be doing if my stocks went down is I would buy, buy, buy, buy. There's no reason for you to be nervous in that kind of situation. Now, if on the other hand, your financial independence plan is to quit your job, buy a bed and breakfast in the smoky mountains, or buy a...

You're in Washington. Buy a bed and breakfast with a beautiful view of Mount Olympia, then I would be really nervous about owning stocks because if my portfolio goes down by 30%, and that means I can't buy my bed and breakfast like I've been planning to, I'm really nervous about that plan.

So, if I were in that situation, I would sell my stocks. I would say I'm not worried about getting the maximum return. I'm worried about getting to the next stage in my plan. Same thing if I were trying to buy real estate. If you're trying to move into real estate because you're convinced that real estate is a better fit for your personality or that you can make more money in real estate or that there's more leverage opportunities, etc., then I would adjust my portfolio.

Back to your stocks. You look at your stocks and you say is this a fair value? If you're buying single stocks, you look down and company A is at $50 a share. You ask yourself, would I buy this company again at $50 a share? And if you would, then you keep it.

If you wouldn't, then you sell. So, everything is going to be based on your strategy. The key thing is to have total clarity about your goals and then have as much clarity as you can about your plans and then all these decisions are fairly simple and straightforward. That makes sense.

Here's what I would do if I were you. Here's the homework I would give you. Spend some time articulating as clearly as possible your specific financial goals. What you're trying to achieve. Ask yourself the why questions. Why is this important to me? And spend some time journaling those things out.

Then, as you have your goals, sit down, put on some soft gentle music, meditation music or whatever you want to. Lie down or sit down in a comfortable chair and envision yourself having fully achieved those goals. And then work backwards in your mind and say how did I get here?

How did I get there from here? What did I do? And build the plan step by step by step in your mind. When you've done that, write it down and organize it and then it should be fairly clear. When I left the financial advice business, I sold all my stocks and among other reasons, one of the reasons I did that was because I didn't care what my returns were going to be 30 years from now.

I was in the middle of a course correction. I could see very clearly in my head what I wanted to build. I knew. I'd gone through all the exercises that I teach. I knew what I would do if I won $10 million tax free in a lottery. I knew the kind of life and the lifestyle that I would build.

And I sat down and I thought it through and for me at that stage, owning stocks was totally meaningless. Whereas having cash was incredibly important. And so I moved everything to cash so I would have the maximum cash available to me to make the various lifestyle moves that I wanted to make.

Now, I executed that plan. I accomplished that plan. It took me longer than I thought, but I made the complete change that I had and today the life that I live is exactly what I sat down and I imagined 5, 6, 7, 8 years ago. It's exactly like that.

Now, I'm still enhancing and going from here, but at this point everything has changed where now the stocks are not a key thing. So now when I sit down as I look at my portfolio, I'm not worried about my portfolio creating income for me. Now I want my portfolio to create impact.

And so I sit and I think, how do I create impact with my portfolio? And I imagine, what do I want to do? What is my goal? If I'm going to be the steward of this money, what is the goal of this money? Why is it in my hands and what am I doing with it?

And so I'm working hard to build the clear vision of the impact of the money that I manage and then to try to see what are the paths that I can proceed through to make the impact that I ultimately want to make. I don't have it perfectly figured out, but I can confidently answer for me, just for me personally, I don't care about the stock market.

I will never create the impact that I want to create by simply owning stocks and publicly traded companies. And so it's very obvious to me that for my goals, the stock market is completely immaterial. But that comes from sitting down, getting a very clear picture of where you're going, and then doing your best to imagine your way through the process of how you think you're ultimately going to get there.

So that's how I would tackle it if I were you. That makes perfect sense. Thank you so much. Do I have some more time to ask some corollary questions on real estate? Let's do it quickly. Yeah, I got about five minutes or so. So go ahead. And if not, we can pick it up next week.

Number one, with the recent interest rates going down, how to decide between whether to refinance or not? And the second one, should I treat my home mortgage equivalent to other investments? Should it be a real estate investment or should I treat it something different? Number one, how to decide whether to refinance or not.

You go and you get a quote on refinancing your mortgage. And you get that quote as best you can. You get the best information that you can from a couple of mortgage brokers. And you do your best to find out what the full costs of a refinance would be.

And then you make a spreadsheet. You take your current mortgage. You put it into a spreadsheet. All of the costs, etc. And then you get your new mortgage estimate. Any closing costs, refinancing costs. And you make an amortization schedule for both of them. And then you analyze that amortization schedule to see where your break-even point is.

And you look at it and you say, "How long if I make this, because there's going to be costs to refinance a mortgage, how long would it take me to recoup these costs?" And in some cases, the answer is, "By 13 months from now, I'll recoup this. And my situation will be better because I'll have a lower payment.

I'll have a lower total interest cost. I'll have more free cash flow that I can invest into other things." In some cases, it'll be 17 years. "I'm not going to do that. I'm probably not even going to be in the house 17 years." And so you sit tight. But the answer is a spreadsheet.

Number two, should you look at your house as a real estate investment or as a personal lifestyle investment? Are you married? Do you have children? - Yes, I am married and I have one son. - Okay. So if you are married and you have children, then that's going to generally push you, if your wife is anything like most women, that's going to push you in the direction of saying, "This is my home where we live and this is where my family lives." Now, that's not to say you shouldn't make changes, but I'm not going to try to milk every dollar that I can out of my house.

Right? How many bedrooms does your house have? - Three. - Three. And so you could, if you wanted to, you could move your children into the master bedroom, put their beds in there with you and your wife, and you could rent two of your other bedrooms out to borders to make maximum money.

You could do that, right? But you don't, right? Because you're not trying to get as rich as you can out of your house. You're sitting there and saying, "This is my home. This is where we live." And so you're trying to build a home. Now, what I find is that my tolerance for discomfort and for lack of lifestyle freedom was much higher when I was younger and when I was single than it is now.

I'm much more willing to give up money in favor of atmosphere and comfort at this stage of my life than I was when I was 20. And so the key for 20-year-olds is to rent every bedroom out of your house and you sleep in your pickup truck in the garage and make as much money as you can because that's not going to be the long-term environment that you're in once you're married and you have children.

So unless your house is costing you something important, assuming that you live in a reasonable house, you're still able to save and invest, you're still making progress towards those goals, etc., then you just simply view it as a home. And you own that home in as cost-efficient as a way as you can figure out how to do.

But I don't put it down as real estate. I just put it down as a home. That said, there's no reason not to make an intelligent decision along the way. So if you can buy in an area where you think there's going to be good long-term appreciation, buy in an area where you think there's going to be good long-term appreciation.

If you can finance your home at a really inexpensive, with a really inexpensive plan, do that. You don't have to be financially stupid, but I don't consider it a real estate investment. I consider it a home. Got it. Makes sense. Makes sense. Thank you very much. Good question, Shiv.

I really enjoyed them. And I thank you very much for calling in. Good questions today. I hope you guys enjoyed this. I guess I would say in closing here that the number one thing is always going to come down to goals. The longer and longer that I have done financial planning, the more scenarios I have worked in, what I have realized is if you have total clarity about what you're trying to do, the answers are relatively clear.

The answers are relatively obvious. But if you're not sure what you're trying to do, then you can't... it's hard to know what's the best path forward. So more and more when I face a difficult decision in my life and I realize that I'm in a situation where I don't know what to do, I try to go back and do whatever work I can do to gain more clarity on the path, on what I'm trying to do, and then consider my options in light of that.

You can come up with your own analogies to prove that point. But as you hear, as you listen to me answer these questions, just always hear the tone. Hear what comes through. If somebody has a clear goal, the path there is fairly simple. If somebody doesn't have a clear goal, we're not sure which way to go.

So spend your time getting clarity on the goal. And I hope that helps you. I've gotten really great feedback about these calls because I know it's so helpful to hear other people wrestle with things and you think, "Oh, that makes my situation obvious." I would love to speak to you on next week's call.

If you'd like to join me on next week's call, go to patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance. Let's work on your problems a little bit. Patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance. Sign up there to support the show on Patreon and you will gain access to next week's call. Again, patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance. I remind you about the Radical Personal Finance Store.

Go to radicalpersonalfinance.com/store and you'll see the courses. Currently I have two courses on the market. One is called "How to Borrow Money Safely and Never Pay Interest Using Credit Cards." And the second is called "How to Survive and Thrive During the Coming Economic Crisis." I just posted an update to my students in that "Survive and Thrive" course about my experiences.

I've completed all of my phase one of my own plans to survive and thrive during the coming economic crisis. I was pleasantly surprised. All the recommendations that I made actually worked out better than I thought they would before I did them. You can find all of that at radicalpersonalfinance.com/store.

Thank you for listening and I will be back with you very soon. Don't just dream about paradise. Live it with Fiji Airways. Escape the ordinary with Fiji Airways Global Beat the Rush Sale. Immerse yourself in white sandy beaches or dive deep into coral reefs. Fiji Airways has flights to Nadi starting at just $748 for light and just $798 for value.

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