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Workout and perk out with the PF Black Card. Join today for zero enrollment and $24.99 a month. See Home Club for details. It's Friday and today, 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. I am your host. And today it's Friday. We do live Q&A. Going to begin with a quick update on what I see happening with coronavirus and the economy. Then I've got one, two, three, four, five, six callers on the line. And today we're going to be moving fast.

I got a busy day, but thank you for being here. If you are new here to the Radical Personal Finance podcast, every Friday when I can arrange the details and the logistics of being able to record a live Q&A call-in show, I do that. Today is Friday, March 27, 2020.

These shows are open to patrons of the show. Those who sign up at Patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance. If you would like to gain access to these call-in shows, go to Patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance. It's one of the best ways to do a call-in and be able to talk about anything you want. Gives you a chance to ask any question you like.

We can talk about things in general. We could talk about anything in your particular life. You can make any comment you'd like to make. Basically, if you want to chat with me, this is one of the best ways to do it. One of the cheapest ways to do it as well.

So for all you deal hounds out there, this is one of your best ways to do it. I want to begin with a brief update on what I see happening with coronavirus and what I see happening with the economy. Obviously, we live in an interesting and frankly staggering time.

The headlines over the last few days have been that a third of the world's population is locked down due to coronavirus. And that is certainly really amazing to think about the scope of this thing. So it's affecting all of our lives. You've had historic drops in the stock market, some massive increases the last few days.

You've also had just a massive, as the economic data starts to come out, unemployment in the United States, huge. We've got stimulus packages all over the place, all over the world. We'll talk about that later time. We'll talk about in the United States. But check in on that. But here is what I see happening right now.

So right now, as I look at the data on coronavirus, it's unclear to me what is happening. What I see happening is an increasing geometric curve, but it doesn't seem to be as severe as was previously expected. And so that's good news. I'm hopeful. I have a few points of good news.

And so I'm more optimistic than I was recently. And so I think that's hopefully you are as well. That although you see a profusion of cases, although things are very difficult in many places in the world, some cities in the United States, it doesn't seem to be as severe as previously feared, which is great news.

Now, what's currently unclear to me is why it doesn't seem to be as severe as previously feared. And I want to emphasize that it's not that things are not severe. There are very heart wrenching things from all over the world. And I expect more of those those things in the days to come.

If you feel like we're out of the woods, I would caution you. I don't I don't sense that at all. But it's not as bad as previously thought. Now, again, what's unclear to me is why. And I don't think the data is particularly compelling at the moment as far as for sure why.

So here's what I see on the viral front going forward. And then we'll talk about the economic front. I'm more optimistic this week based upon what I see. And as I see it, the worst case scenario was to have this massive global pandemic that was on track to kill tens of millions or hundreds of millions of people.

Now, the only absolutely guaranteed solution to that kind of spread is to just simply stay home and go nowhere. A virus is something that you can understand how it works, even if it's the most severe, it's transmitted through aerosol, et cetera. It's very contagious. If you just simply stay home and if you're not infected and you don't go anywhere, then you don't have to be infected.

And so that's why the ultimate the only like truly guaranteed effective public policy solution is to lock everything down. And you see that happening all throughout the world. Now, the lockdown, of course, has devastating economic consequences, as we are all experiencing today. But the lockdown is the only thing that's guaranteed to work.

And that's why governments pursue it. But if you think about kind of what's been the bad scenario, we've assumed that the worst case scenario looking back has been a massive, very contagious, very deadly disease that spreads throughout the world. And the answer to that is lockdown until or unless some kind of vaccine is developed in the timeline for that is 12 to 18 months.

Now, as we've talked about the jumping off points, as I see it, there are three jumping off points to that worst case scenario. And these three are all looking better. The first jumping off point is the development of some kind of effective therapy, some some magical cure, some miracle cure.

The news over last week has especially been hot and heavy around the hydroxy chloroquine and Z-Pak. I can't tell you that I'm not a biology guy. I see increasing anecdotal evidence that that is possibly effective. And there's doctors all over the world that are trying that. And I haven't seen it disproven as a therapy.

So perhaps there's a really good solution there. And that would be awesome because those drugs are inexpensive. They're widely available. They're kind of old. If they were effective against that, that would be great. And I'm sure there are other doctors around the world who are working on other therapies.

That's been kind of one of the first things to improve things. One of the first areas that we could look at to improve things. The second area to look at to improve things would be the development of widespread testing. If a society can develop and implement widespread testing, then the society can just simply quarantine those who are sick.

And that would be really great. Now, the United States is far behind on this with such a huge population. It's hard to see that happening quickly. But all around the world, testing is ramping up. They're kind of improving things, getting things faster and faster and faster. Used to be it was going to be days to get a result for a test.

Now there are tests that are increasingly widely available and we're up to a day. So that's good. Once we can get tests down to a few hours and cheap and distributed all around the world, then that means that societies can do widespread testing and you can just quarantine the sick and those that have had contact with the sick.

And you see that happening very effectively in some countries in Asia that it seemed to have managed the outbreak more effectively. So we're making progress on that front. That could be good. The most important progress, in my opinion, is the recent development of an antibody test. And if this antibody test proves to be effective and if it can be spread and used widely across a population, that I think has the potential of shortening this whole event, shortening this whole affair, which would be awesome.

Because of the antibody, what the antibody test could prove is who has had the disease and who has not. That can be helpful for a few reasons. Well, one obvious reason is if those who've had the disease actually find themselves to be immune to the disease, they can go back to work without much fear.

They can be useful in many situations without the worry of getting infected and possibly even spreading the infection. But more importantly, as I see it, the antibody test could tell us the actual prevalence of the disease in a population so that we could better understand the people who have severe symptoms.

The guess and the debate about this particular strain of disease has been how long has it been here? Now, the timeline that most of us understand is that it developed in Wuhan. It started in China. It started to be spread from there. Wuhan got really serious in December and then it got bad in January and then it started to spread throughout the world.

And then it spread throughout the world and we've got some cases. But along the way, there've been a lot of anecdotal reports of people saying, well, I had something, I thought it was just a severe flu, but I had something like that back in December or I had something like that back in January.

And so one of the suspicions is that the disease is actually much more widespread than previously thought and that it's just simply less catastrophic with its medical impact than previously thought. But the only way to know that for certain is to develop and then implement a widespread antibody testing.

And so that's the development that I'm excited about and looking to see what happens over the next week or two. Because if it did prove, if we could prove that there were actually a lot of people tested, then, sorry, a lot of people with the disease and just a smaller number than previously feared are actually sick all the time, that would be fantastic because then that would allow society to open up a little bit.

So there's the optimistic case, at least that I'm hoping for. At the moment, it's unclear to me personally what's actually happening. I'm confused by the reports I read. I'm confused by the data that I see, and I'm just simply not competent to assess it, and so I'm waiting and watching and letting the epidemiologists do their thing.

Note of important news is that some of the most dire predictions have been rolled back significantly in the last week, and so that's great news. Now let's flip this now and talk about the economic impact because here's what I've thought a lot about. Obviously, we're hurting massively. I've spoken to so many listeners and clients who are just going through catastrophic change.

The unemployment claims huge all around the world. Businesses just, you know, kind of waiting to see. We're all waiting to see. So we're all desperate for a better understanding of what the actual data is telling us. On the worst case scenario, we've got catastrophe, right? Total catastrophe. We know that.

But on the best case scenario, I've thought, well, does this all just go back to normal? Obviously, that's what we would all hope for. And it's interesting thing about something like a flu pandemic is that maybe maybe the whole thing is exposed a few weeks from now. It's just a total overreaction.

It was a giant scare, but we got it wrong. And so can everything just go back to normal? That's one of the interesting things about a flu pandemic, because if you had a job and there was a functioning business a couple of weeks ago, let's say that a few weeks from now we find out that our worst fears were unfounded and we can all go back to work.

Well, all the infrastructure still exists. Everything still exists. So maybe we should just go ahead and get back to work. I think it's possible that could happen to some degree, and that would help to avoid some of the worst case scenarios. You know, 50% unemployment kind of thing, 50% drop in GDP, which is it's hard to even say those numbers.

But I still can't see an immediate return. And that's one of the desperately difficult things about a flu pandemic. My life, because of my lifestyle, doesn't look that different today than it did a few weeks ago and then it did a few months ago. And I wouldn't expect it to look that different a few months from now.

But I am so tired of this thing. It feels like it just goes on and on and on. I've been paying attention to it since January. Here we are in March. And so a flu pandemic is awful because it's so long. It's probably years in terms of before everything is fully understood or fully handled.

And so you just get so tired of it. And I think that that is being expressed. I feel that way. And I think I see that same thing being expressed in so many other people where I've been sitting at home for a week. I'm done. Let's get on with life here.

And so we feel that. But the problem is that nothing would rapidly go back. And so even in a best case scenario, for example, I just was talking with my wife about this morning, I said, let's go through the best case scenario. Let's assume that we get widespread antibody testing.

Let's assume that it proves that our worst fears were unfounded. It's not as deadly as previously thought. Would we go immediately back and just say, let's go to it? I wouldn't. I'm not going to. I would continue to stay largely isolated. I would add in some activities again, but I wouldn't just go right back to it.

I wouldn't just go to public places, start going to public gatherings, start going to conventions and things like that, even if it were just the common flu. Right. The flu itself is an awful thing. Most people don't go out to places where they know people have the flu. Many people are very cautious and careful, as they should be, to protect themselves against that.

So even if we just said, you know what, the people who said it's just the flu were right. I don't think they were right. But maybe they are. It's just the flu. Well, even still, I would adjust my own life and still maintain safety and be careful until time goes on.

And so even if that were the case or even if some kind of vaccine were developed, you know, I was talking to my wife about that. Would we take some kind of vaccine? I wouldn't. Not in the short term, at least. Now, just because I don't trust things that are rushed to market, I don't trust the way that this kind of emergency footing, you get bad data, you get bad testing.

There's such a press to like get the economy going that I would just, I know that I'm safe if I stay home and I minimize my contact. And so I would continue that for a period of time. Now, I don't think that most people are like me. I think most people would just say, let's get back to it.

But I think there's enough people like me that would keep things constrained that I still expect, even in the best flu case now, I still expect significant economic recession, possibly depression just simply due to the change in behavior. So I say that to say I'm cautiously optimistic today about the virus.

I still don't think that there's a reason to think that we're all just going to get back to normal in a few weeks, even in the best case scenarios. And I still think that some of the really difficult scenarios are possible. And so I'm just waiting and seeing. I don't know what any of us can do except wait and see, do the best we can in our personal finances, do the best we can to care for our families and kind of watch for more evidence to develop.

I think the last week was really important and the next couple of weeks will be really important because if the worst case scenarios don't very quickly start to be seen, then I think we can look and say that, you know what, it wasn't as bad as we feared. Now, that doesn't bode well for the future.

Anytime you make big warnings about people, people generally don't want to overreact. There's a big political argument about we're overreacting and this was crazy, et cetera. I see it as I see overreaction in the early stage of a flu outbreak is the only rational response. It's the only rational response until you get more data.

And unfortunately, though, that doesn't work well in today's soundbite world. And so I'm hoping for the best, but still kind of watching day by day and see what happens. So that's my update for you. Last week on the Q&A show, I talked significantly about the need for, or I talked about the value of being concerned about financial stability in the banks, et cetera.

I encouraged you to withdraw an appropriate amount of physical currency from the bank. I still stand by that recommendation. I have not seen any evidence this last week of any widespread panic, which I'm thrilled about. I have continued to get reports from listeners that they have a hard time getting much money out of the bank.

I think if you've never tried to do business in cash, you have no concept of how hard it is. If you've never tried to do a wire transfer, you have no concept of how the bank treats you like a crook until you have to prove to them 10 ways otherwise.

It's not your money in that situation. It's insane. And so I'm still concerned about that, but thankfully I've seen no major risk factors emerge over the next week, and I'm hoping that we don't get any more risk factors over the coming weeks. But I still am concerned about the potential of those risk factors.

On Monday morning, the FDIC released a video saying you don't need to get money out of the bank. You can trust an FDIC insured account. That tells me that a lot of people are concerned and taking money out of the bank. And so the key thing I would just encourage you to remember is that the hardest thing about a flu pandemic is you're going to get tired of it.

I'm tired of it. I'm tired of talking about it on the show. I'm tired of it. We're all tired of it. But this kind of disaster is very slow moving. There's not a quick answer to it. It's very slow moving. And these risks continue. So I would not rush down to the bank and deposit all my money and say, "Hey, look, we're getting into it." That's woefully premature.

I'm still concerned about longer term events. On Monday night, I did a special presentation with students of my How to Survive and Thrive During the Coming Economic Crisis course, and we talked about protecting your money from worst case scenarios like hyperinflation. I don't predict hyperinflation in the United States.

I still think the U.S. dollar, as evidenced by the data, is the strongest currency in the world. But I'm watching the numbers every single day, watching very carefully. We are in historic times, and the actual impact of those events is not apparent. But I've taken steps to protect my savings from those events.

So that's my summary statement of where we stand as of Friday, March 27, 2020. I hope that's helpful to you. And now let's go to the phones and answer some questions. We begin with Anne in Maryland. Anne, welcome to the show. How can I serve you today? Hello, Joshua.

Thank you very much for taking my call. I have a reflection that I would like to share, not necessarily a question, and I obviously would be very interested in your response. But before I tell you about the reflection and my observations, I just want to caveat it by saying that I work in drug development business, and I do understand where to read the right information and what's bullshit and what's not.

I'm sorry. You probably have forgot this. So, first of all, I have to apologize. I haven't listened to all of your releases recently. And this has to do with my first observation of information fatigue. I realized that at some point there's so much information coming in, even for a person like me who can sort through the information, get the right one.

And I observed that when I stopped, really, I just took basic care of my family, of myself. I decided what I need to do every day and how I need to live every day. And I stopped consuming the information. The days are wonderful. The weather is wonderful. And it's just the life is wonderful.

So the second thing that I noticed is that I noticed that there is a huge, there is value in morale. So there is so much fear about what the virus would do to us and the economics and everything. And I think that there is a huge value in morale.

And that is like we are trying to pay enormous price for something we don't know the price of, which is the virus and pandemic, by sacrificing something that also has huge value. And so I decided that morale of myself and my family is very important. And I took steps to boost that.

And then by also helping people around, offering them to bring them groceries to their porches and all other things, sharing what I have. The other day I was in the store and I was getting some of the food and the cashier asked me if I could, if it's OK, if instead of six cans, I only take three cans of something.

And I said, oh, of course, do you want all of them? And she was so surprised because everyone else was fighting for their cans. And I said, no, no, no. If you really need those cans, you can keep them. And she just, she almost cried and said, thank you very much.

People usually don't give back those cans. I said, are you kidding me? This is. And so it takes me to the next point is that this is probably the biggest event that I experienced since the collapse of Soviet Union, which I personally experienced for myself. And I know and when I was a child during the collapse of Soviet Union, so I had a little bit different impression of that.

But I remember very well my grandparents and my parents, what it did to them. And right now, as an adult, I was surprised that I have no fear that, you know, that the market is falling or anything. I have a feeling of wanting to help. So the only way I can keep my kind of my sanity, my dignity, my morale, my sorry, my voice breaks up, but is by is by giving back.

So if I'm hearing the tests are missing, right, I try to contact all my friends, doctors and ask what's missing, why tests are not there. Is it because there are no reagents? Is it because there are not enough PCR machines? Can we get together? There are so many researchers who can donate.

I contacted a local health health authorities. I know they're doing contact tracing of patients. And I said, I have experience experience in medical industry. Can I can at least volunteer? We could do contact tracing. And I really don't. And I I'm just telling you what I'm observing. I'm observing that I'm not worried about the future because I feel like it's it gives me meaning in life if I help to solve it.

Like my brain goes to the place where we should solve it, not hide, not. And I think that people are generally very good people and I'm OK to die if it's these people. And I'm sorry. OK. All right. I just want to say that it's like imagine wars that our grandparents took part in.

Imagine soldiers. They go, for instance, and die. And you ask them how is it possible that they're not afraid? And of course, they're afraid. But I think something kicks in in our system that's bigger than us. And this pandemic is such a silly thing compared, let's say, to World War Two or one when people were actually dying and infrastructure was destroyed and so forth.

And you see your children dying here. We're children are at least safe, more or less. And so I'm I just I did not expect it. It will make me so so. I wanted to share the fact that. That giving back and participating and fixing it actually can give you so much, so much strength and optimism because you feel like your life is full of meaning and cool.

Sorry about that. Thank you, Josh. Amen. Yeah, I think that that's definitely if you study any tragedy, any disaster, it's a time when so many people can step forward and shine and you appreciate people and you appreciate things in a way that you often don't. It's neat to see in all over the United States.

It's neat to see in a with a shortage of PPE, protective equipment. It's it's neat to see people stepping up and getting out sewing machines and doing those things. I used to talk to my grandparents some about World War Two and try to understand what life was like in World War Two, because I would I would study.

You read about it in the history books. You read about, you know, people planning victory gardens and making up collections and you read about shortages. You couldn't get tires for your cars and all this stuff and factories being repurposed. And as I grew up, it was just a sense of unified common purpose that I could not imagine.

It was just a sense that I could not imagine. And I would talk to them about it. And I have often wondered, could that ever come back? You know, you look at the United States and so many countries around the world, you look at the United States and it just seems so entirely fractured.

And you wonder, can things come back? And on a national level, I don't think so. But in your local community, when you recognize that your neighbors are on the left and the right of you and you go down to your local hospital or you look in the local community, then you can still have that sense of let's work together and let's beat this thing.

And it's exciting to see that experience. I know many people reflect on events like 9/11 and they appreciate that sense of camaraderie, that sense of unity that was hard to find in previous times. And so I agree. I think it's great to have that. And to your overall point about ignoring the information and not watching the news, it was fascinating.

The World Health Organization came out with an official advisory last couple of days. Don't watch the news or you'll feel it'll be something like that. Don't watch the news. It'll depress you. And I think that's generally good advice. I try to pay attention to it because I feel like a responsibility to filter it and to share with others.

But at the end of the day, the only reason you really need information is to affect your behavior. And so you need enough information to affect your behavior and then go from there. And in a time like this, you don't need all that much. And there is a real beauty to day to day life.

There is a beauty to playing with your children. There is a beauty to taking a walk outside. And I see a lot of people enjoying those things. And so may we all do that and engage with that more and more. So thank you for contributing, Anne. Did you have a question or any other comments before I go on to the next caller, Anne?

No, just thought I'll share it and maybe someone out there who is listening or participating in the call feel the same way. And I hope that they know that there are many people like us. Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you. And I do thank you for sharing that. And I've thought I've hoped that I did an okay job talking about, you know, talking about things without getting too, you know, too depressed.

I felt bad last week going away from the show, but I do feel like there's a sense of realism that is important. But in the midst of realism, it's important to maintain an optimistic attitude. And I'll do my best in the future to do that, to be realistic, but also optimistic at the same time.

We go now to Indiana. Welcome to the show. How can I serve you today? Hi, Joshua. Thanks for taking my call quickly. Anne, thank you for that call. I appreciate it. If no one but me and Joshua, at least there's two of us. But Joshua, my question was about, I called in last week and was kind of on the wrong topic.

It was COVID day. But I feel like I have what for lack of a better term, I would call a working class mentality. Grew up with, you know, most of my family and relatives have been hourly workers of one sort or another, or very low level managers, not a lot of professionals, doctors, lawyers, et cetera.

And I feel like there is something that I am maybe missing in that, in my mentality, as opposed to having a mentality where I've been more exposed to that. So just curious of your thoughts on that and how to, how to change that. Yeah. So I thought about this last week and I thank you for calling back.

It is nice to get away from COVID and talk about something else. So first I don't have a perfect answer because this is a change that I've, I've had to make myself. And I'll tell you just a short story. When I was a financial advisor, I, I started when I was 23 years old.

I didn't come from a wealthy family. We were middle-class. We were culturally upper middle-class, but financially middle-class. We had a one income family. My dad was an engineer, but he didn't, he didn't work. He didn't make tons and tons of money. And we always had our needs met, but we didn't live the high lifestyle that we didn't live a high consumption lifestyle.

We, we had, we weren't poor. We didn't have cars that were breaking down all the time. We didn't worry about, I didn't ever worry about getting evicted out of an apartment like so many people do. My, my, my, my dad had a lot of flexibility. You know, he worked from home before that was even popular.

He had, he traveled all over the world. But we, I didn't grow up in, in kind of the glitterati. I didn't grow up. We didn't have a boat. We didn't go out on the weekends on the boat. I did. We didn't go to the country club. You know, our vacations were, were rather modest.

We didn't go out to eat a lot. And so I came from, from, from more humble financial background. And I never really thought much about it until I became a financial advisor. And when I was a financial advisor, I worked hard, but what I focused on was I focused on technical expertise.

I studied hard to, to know how to give people good answers on, on tax planning or on financial planning. That was where my skillset was. Then along the way somebody else joined my firm and this young man who joined the firm, he joined right out of college and it was his first, it was his first job right out of college.

He had never worked all throughout college, all throughout high school. I had worked jobs, all kinds of jobs all throughout college and high school. He'd never had a job. His dad was a very wealthy attorney, extremely highly paid, I think a litigator, but I'm not sure, but extremely highly paid from the upper Northeast, kind of from that, that, that culture in the upper North, upper, and I can't remember if it was New York or Boston and I don't remember exactly, but it was from that culture.

They had a place in Florida. He had a big, a huge fishing boat, you know, a $300,000 fishing boat. And here was this young man who was 21 years old and or 22 years old gets this new job as a financial advisor. You know, he drives a BMW that his dad had given to him.

He's got the boat, he's out on the boat every weekend, which in South Florida is of course a big, a big thing. And as I watched him, I was fascinated because from a, from a, from a, from a technical perspective, he was as a financial planner, in the beginning he was technically incompetent.

Now he was a smart man, but he was technically incompetent. He didn't know what he was talking about. He didn't have an idea of the law. He didn't have an idea of things. And I would do, I would go on, I would go on appointments with him and you know, he, he, he didn't know what a Roth IRA was.

And yet here he is, here he is with a financial advisor. He couldn't even explain the basics to people. And so I thought, there's no way this guy makes it, you know, there's no way that he, that he makes it in this business. Well, fast forward, not only did he make it, but he was one of the biggest producers that I ever knew.

And to this day, he's still in the, the, the business. He's still in the financial business. He's sold millions and millions of dollars of premium of life insurance. And he is just massively successful. Now he studied over time. I left that business. I haven't kept contact with him. I've watched him from afar.

He studied a little bit over time and I bet he's a little bit more technically competent. But the thing that I observed is that he had something that I never had. He had a comfort in he came from a different class of different financial class. And he looked at the world a different way.

And he had a comfort of, of talking about money that I didn't have. I remember the first time I, I was showing a life insurance policy to a guy with a hundred thousand dollars of annual premium. And I did this thing and I was inside, I'm shaking in my boots because I couldn't imagine somebody, you know, paying a hundred thousand dollars a year for their life insurance policy.

And this guy that I, that I showed it to was an entirely appropriate recommendation for him. It was, it was something that certainly could work out really well. As far as it was a good fit for him. It was, it was ideal in, in so many ways, but I was scared in my boots because I couldn't imagine somebody paying a hundred thousand dollars a year for life insurance.

But this guy, you know, my, my, my client, I think he made five or $6 million a year. And it was, it was an entirely reasonable thing given the financial plan that we had. And my, my friend, he, he fit in that world. And so he didn't know anything about life insurance.

I was bothered by, I was totally bothered by all the technical things. I'm usually buy term insurance and, and, and all the arguments about, well, this is superior and that's superior. My friend was ignorant of all of that, but he flowed in that world in a way that I didn't have a clue how to flow.

And he sold so much insurance left, right, and center. He had all his, his, his parents' contacts and, and he was a huge producer and is still today a huge producer, even though his technical knowledge is, I hope this doesn't sound arrogant, but probably, you know, a 10th of mine.

And I've, I've, I've pondered that over the years and I thought, what, why? Like, why does the world work that way? Why is it that some people have this, this experience and this, this mindset and why is it so hard for some of the rest of us to learn?

And you, and when you, when you go and you start studying the, the mindset of money I have observed that there are those who, who have a hard time adapting to the mindset of money. And there is those who don't. And you can't deny the impact of your upbringing on yourself.

You can't deny the fact that the circumstances that you were raised in make it give you a different perspective. Now I still, you know, there are a lot of people who are raised in very wealthy families that are wonderful human beings. There are a lot of parents, though they be wealthy, who, who have, have succeeded in raising wonderful humans.

And I love, you love being around those people. There are people who are warm that are generous, that are kind, et cetera. And then of course, as with anything, there are people who are not. So I don't think that money has to be the key in terms of that.

You can't raise a great kid. If you're, if you're rich, you obviously can. And then I think that often people are overly critical just simply through the jealousy of the wealthy. But I do also often appreciate the, the appreciate those who have started with humble beginnings and who've become very wealthy because they often have a kind of a different sense.

They appreciate it, but they also have had to learn new things. And I've been learning over the years. I've learned some of those things for myself. And so here's, so that was kind of a backstory to say, I don't know exactly the answer cause I'm still learning it. But as I have grown in my personal wealth, as I have grown in my money making ability, I've realized how hard it is for me to imagine just simple things like money flowing easily.

You can earn money in a hard way and you can earn money in an easy way. And depending on your history and your background, you often look at these different solutions. And yet there are lots of people who earn money very easily. And you can earn a lot of money.

One of the things that I've taken to doing it for myself and for others is I've realized that one of the most valuable things that I can do is to help somebody extend their vision. Now I'm growing increasingly confident of this, but I still can't even do it for myself.

I have to have friends and coaches and people who come alongside me who say, Joshua, you're thinking small. Why are you thinking so small? Why? Because in a lot of times we have these, I hate the term, I hate the term, but it is true. We have these limiting beliefs, these ideas, these scripts that are put within us based upon our experience.

And I think the important thing is to look at that and study and say, you know what? There's no reason why this has to be that way. You know, I don't have to believe this limited idea. And that's where, I don't know how to teach it because I'm still learning it.

But I'll tell you some things that have been helpful for me, specific tactics now. Number one, is I've always found it helpful to learn from the experiences of others. Now when I was growing up, I did that through reading, and I think you could still do it through reading.

But one of the major improvements in our modern world is the ability for one person on one side of the world to access someone on the other side of the world. And you can find people that have a very different experience and look at the world differently. You can listen to them and you can kind of learn from their idea and from their mentality.

And so I find that to be useful. Number two is by association. One of the big, most valuable things, it's just somebody to associate with people who have a different understanding of life. When I was a financial advisor, I used to have a group of friends who were financial advisors and we would talk about the fact that we could really only hang out with each other.

We could really only vacation with each other because we had a different experience of the world because of our time independence and our lifestyle independence. And because we had a high income and because we had total control of our time, conversations would go something like this. It's like, "Hey, do you want to go hunting next week?" Or, "Let's take a trip.

Do you want to go fishing next week?" Or whatever it is. Or, "Would you like to go out tomorrow?" It's like, "Hey, it's a Tuesday and would you like to go fishing with me tomorrow?" "Sure. I'll just cancel all my appointments." Right? And you cancel all your appointments, move them around and renegotiate.

Half the time you don't even have to do that. You just say, you call your staff and you say, "Please cancel all my appointments." It's simple. And we would talk about how blessed we were to have that. But the fact that it was hard to associate with people who didn't because most people wouldn't look at the next week and say, "Oh, you know what?

You got an extra spot on the boat. Let's go to the Bahamas and fish for a few days. I'll go. Absolutely. I don't even need to check my schedule. I don't need to check. I can renegotiate everything." And there was a difference. That was a different lifestyle than a lot of people experienced.

But being around those kinds of people starts to change you. And so it's one of those things where you're affected by it because you're part of it, but you're also become more and more part of it because you're affected by it. So choosing carefully the kind of people that you associate with.

If you associate with business owners, you associate with people who are financially productive, they look at the world in a different way. And this is where I'm very sympathetic to people who are just getting started because I know so clearly what that's like. And I want to be the kind of person who gets excited with somebody all along the way.

But many business owners just look at the world in a way that, for example, with you, hourly employees can't even imagine. A business owner looks at the world and says, "If I do this, I can make another half a million dollars next year." And that's doable. But an hourly employee says, "I've got to make a raise by 5% and that's going to be my ticket to freedom." So association is really, really important.

And then I think you can really very clearly, you can direct and change your mind. You can change what you create in the world based upon what you see. And that's where I've worked hard over the years to change kind of what I see over the world. And sometimes you have to identify beliefs.

So I'll give you one for me. One of the biggest things for me in not being able to create kind of a really big future has always been the question of risk. You know, risk. I don't want to risk something. And for me, it often comes down to just seeing and having worked with people who are in difficult circumstances, seeing how impactful risk can be in lives, right?

When somebody goes bankrupt, it can destroy a family. And since I consider family to be sacrosanct, I consider marriage and my children to be one of my highest priorities in life, I wouldn't want to risk something for my children based upon that. And so I've often been much more conservative.

Meanwhile, there's people out there that just don't even consider risk. I think the right solution is somewhere in the middle, right? Where you consider risk and you plan for it. But what I've done is I've imagined different scenarios. And then I think about how do I protect the downside?

So why do I teach so much about asset protection planning? Because if you understand asset protection planning, you understand that if your business fails or you go bankrupt, you don't have to be destitute. There's no reason for it. And that's something that most people don't grasp is that you can use the laws to your effect.

And so I found just by reading, by association, by intentionally feeding my head different pictures, that there's a real value to it. One of the hardest things for me to let go has just simply been not being cheap in everything. And I think this is a common experience that many people face.

But that you have to learn at some point not to be cheap. Now frugality is important at every stage. If you are earning $7.50 an hour, you can't, I don't believe, maybe I'm wrong, right? But I don't believe you can just say, well, I'm just not going to be cheap.

I'm going to be spendy. And I'm going to create the reality. Well, I've never seen that work. I've never heard of that working. Somebody goes out and gets a credit card and starts buying a bunch of stuff. So they look fancy. I was talking with a young man recently about a cell phone.

He was like, my goal is to have a fancy cell phone. And I said, well, you know, I appreciate that. And I tossed him my thousand dollar cell phone. And I said, here's a thousand dollar cell phone. I said, when I bought this, it was expensive and it was fancy.

But let me tell you that that kind of just consumption is not the key to happiness or anything. I said, it's a phone. And as soon as you buy it, you think right now that having this fancy phone is going to fulfill you. It's not. I said that if you keep with that mindset, it just continues to, I got to have one more thing that's going to fulfill me.

And then I talked with him about some of the things that I have found to be helpful. And I said, you can have a thousand dollar phone, but the biggest mistake that a 17 year old makes is going out and spending a thousand dollar phone after tax. You should know your business should own every single phone you ever use.

Every single computer should always be bought by your business. Like you're a fool if you're paying for that stuff out of your personal checking account. And I said, you need to look at the world a little bit differently and back to kind of being cheap versus frugal. You realize at some point that you've got to change what you're doing.

And if you're not in change is uncomfortable. So if you can't look back at the last year and say, you know what, that doesn't serve me anymore. I've got to level up to this other belief or this other practice. You know, for me, I made a commitment a few years ago.

I was like, I'm not, I'm not staying in cheap hotels anymore. I'm not going to do it. Because it's so destructive to my productivity that even though it's the greatest deal in the world, I'm not going to do it. And I think you get there more and more in your life where as you start to earn more and you intentionally adjust that and you intentionally, you know, change where you are, you better be throwing away the things that didn't serve you.

I was talking with a client of mine last week and we were talking about, you know, things like mowing your lawn. And it's like, you know, on the one hand I have children. I want my children to see me mowing my lawn. I want them to know that I'm, I don't want, I don't want them to be detached from the things of life, but I'm not going to risk my life and my brain.

And this client I was speaking with, he's a surgeon. He's like, I cannot risk my livelihood that makes me a huge amount of money by going in and mowing a lawn. Same thing as like with going skiing, right? It's like, I'm not going to risk going on a ski vacation.

I have to have, you know, these hands and these feet and this body makes me millions and millions of dollars. I have to have that in first case. So I'm not going to do the mow the lawn. And what I've found over the years is I've found one of the most helpful things for me was some of Dan Sullivan's coaching on just simply time.

As an entrepreneur, one of the things that I have found is that there's no real connection to the amount of work that I put in versus the amount of output that I get out. Years ago, I, and so I've learned to prioritize play. I've learned to prioritize relaxation because that keeps my creativity flowing so that I can help more people more effectively.

The way I learned this was years ago with a podcast episode. I was sitting and I was just wrestling and wrestling and wrestling with something and I was trying to grind it out. I was trying to sit at my desk and just work, work, work, work, work, work, work, because that's the, that's kind of the working man's mentality.

I'm going to sit at my desk and I'm going to work, work, work, work, work. And I couldn't, I couldn't even create the outline. I turned the microphone on and nothing worked, nothing worked. And finally I said, that's it. And I just quit. I said, I'm done. I don't, I'm not going to do a show today.

I'm done. And I went for a walk with my children around the neighborhood. And while I was on the walk in about five minutes, I instantly, I instantly, while I was playing with my kids, I instantly had a blinding, like clarity around the topic, instantly in my head, the entire thing organized itself.

I came back home. I spent three minutes writing down what was in my head. And then the next morning when I went back to my desk, I turned on the microphone and I recorded the show and it was a great show. And I learned that I cannot force things to happen.

And so I've learned to play, to relax. And even with regard to money, I've had to change my mindset around it, which brings me to my final recommendation. I think the most effective way to change it is to set goals and to set big goals. I've taken again and again and again to advising people.

It's like, why do you not have a 10 X goal for your income? And this is where if you come from a working class, I hate that term. Everybody works, but I, you know, the pot, poorer class, an hourly wage kind of thing. Many people's goals is, is to make another dollar on your income, which is awesome, right?

That's great. But your goal needs to be to 10 X your income because that forces you to think differently. If you're making $20 an hour, the question is how can you make $200 an hour? Well, you can't do it by working harder. You can't do it by doing it just a little bit more.

You have to do it by completely going in a different direction. And that was one of the things that in my own life that's been helpful is I can't, I can't force experience onto myself that I, that I don't have. I can't force a change of mind or change of beliefs if I'm lying to myself, I have to learn something where I actually believe it.

I can't, I will not lie to myself. But what I can do is I can set goals that are aggressive, that are large. And then those goals in time, when you set them and you think about them, and you work on them, even if you don't know how to achieve them, they generally will pull you forward into the future because you'll start to adjust things.

You'll start to take different opportunities. You'll start to move in a different direction in a way that you wouldn't have previously. And so if you're trying to figure out how do I change my money consciousness? How do I change these limiting beliefs? Reading, associating with different people, directing your mindset, analyzing, I think is good.

But I think the simplest place to start is just by simply setting goals, goals that scare you. And so don't set a goal of making 10% more, set a goal of making a thousand percent more and recognize that I don't have any idea how to do this. But in time, you know, my brain will direct me towards the opportunities that are here.

And so set the goal, think about it, think about what it would mean, even if you have no clue how to achieve it. And in time that path will start to open up. That's the best I got for you. So I'll give you the last word on that one.

Thanks Joshua. I appreciate that. And I, I read the goals book that was the first on your reading list and that was very helpful in thinking that way. So thank you for that recommendation. Um, I guess if you have time for one short followup, I think one of my biggest hangups is I'm sensitive to the criticism.

I feel I can just imagine a lot of my relatives listening to what you just said and saying, well, yeah, that's fine for those old fat cats. And you know, those wealthy guys that take somebody that changed the tires and somebody who's got to grow the food and we're never going to make that kind of money.

So blah, blah, blah, screw them. Um, have you experienced that sort of, I just, cause you know, if I go home and I talk to my parents about my goals and they respond that way, that's going to be very disheartening. You have any experience with that sort of thing?

Yeah. I think the first thing is I would never talk about my goals with people who are going to make fun of them. Um, there are people, and especially like, you don't get to choose the family that you're part of. Um, you don't choose where you're planted, but I don't talk about my goals that I have with people who are going to make fun of them.

Right. I, I, just a simple thing, right? Right. Like I, I like to, I sometimes enjoy studying languages and I have an ambition to be a polyglot. That's one of my personal goals. If I go to a group of polyglots and I tell them my ambition, they tell me, this is great, man.

That's easy. Yeah. Last year I learned German. Um, you know, right now this quarter I'm working on, uh, on Russian and then I'm going to pick up Mandarin, uh, Chinese in the fourth quarter. And so you just get this totally different idea versus where you go to the average person and say, you know, I'd like to learn six languages.

I've got a list of eight. My personal, the languages I want are eight. Uh, those, that's what I'm, I'm, I'm working on. And so you go to a polyglot and I'm like, yeah, man, that's great. It might take you four or five years, but you'll get there. Um, then you're going to, it's going to be great.

But you tell most people I want to learn eight languages and they laugh at you. So that's a non-financial thing. And, but it's, it's really serious. Now with money, same thing is that if you have an ambition to make a million dollars a year, don't tell that to somebody who's making $30,000 a year.

Um, but if you go to somebody who's making, um, half a million dollars a year or a million dollars a year or a few million dollars a year, and you say, I have an ambition to make a million dollars a year. Say, absolutely. So tell your goals to people who are going to encourage you.

Same thing with like being fat, right? Um, if you go to a personal trainer and you're really fat and you say, I don't want to be fat anymore, they're going to say, you can do it. Absolutely. Because they've worked with people and help people not be fat anymore. Whereas if you go to a fat person, they're going to tear you down.

And so don't tell your goals to people who are going to make fun of them. You've got to protect that until you've developed the personal confidence to just look them in the face and say, okay, you don't have to believe it. But practically speaking, I would say also you've got to work through some of the ethical issues.

And this is where people, many people have a real flawed ideology, especially around money. Um, if you see money as something that you get based upon exploitation, you'll never feel comfortable with earning a lot of money or with having a lot of money. And so that's one of the most destructive things that when somebody has this idea that billionaires should not exist, uh, they, they, they're, they're totally destructive to themselves and to society in general.

Um, whereas my ideology, my philosophy is very simple. Money comes through service. And so if I can serve more people, then I can earn more money. And so for me that's entirely congruent with my ideology. Um, now that of course, comes out of Christian theology. The scripture is crystal clear as far as, um, the, the economic systems, et cetera.

But I've known a lot of people who believe that the more money you have, the more people you've exploited. Now, I think simultaneously, you've got to, to, um, uh, watch out for those other, those other sides of it. For example, when I do the, I'm, I am furious about the stimulus and the bailout and whatnot happening in the United States, because what I see happening is a complete and total moral travesty where people are getting rich based upon exploitation.

And so you need an ethical system that brings these things together. So if you're concerned about these things first, don't tell anybody, but then you have to build an ideology or an F and an ethical system, uh, in your, in your experience that allows you to know where does success come from and then allows you to work through that.

So set the goals, work on it, and I'll continue to, uh, to try to help you with it, uh, here, um, on the show as we proceed forward. All right, Daniel in Florida, welcome to the show. How can I serve you today, sir? Hey, Joshua, thank you for taking my call.

And I was really glad to hear your coronavirus update in the beginning. Uh, not least of all, because it exactly mirrors the way I'm thinking. So confirmation bias makes me happy. You're right. Absolutely. You're exactly right about all of it. You're a smart man. Along those lines, um, I, I have maybe an ethical question would be the best way to pose it.

Um, and while I don't expect necessarily an ethical guidance out of you, um, I know that you and I think very similarly, um, with regard to, uh, politics and, and maybe, maybe you can use yourself as a proxy here. And hopefully this is interesting to members of the audience who I know kind of fall into the same category.

Um, but part of this disastrous, uh, wealth transfer bailout is, um, the expansion of some, um, sorry, brain fart here, uh, of some, some unemployment insurance, which I think is probably the least odious portion of it. Um, and I am self-employed. I work in the service industry. Uh, business is dried up.

I'm either refunding a lot of business or business is getting kicked down the road until next year. And I'm not concerned because I'm early as a result of listening to the show since the beginning, uh, I have months and months of runway, so there's no concern here. But what I'm wondering is I'm technically unemployed and I understand from, uh, some people in my industry who, who aren't in a similar financial position that that is now being extended to business owners who are in a similar situation.

Is it unethical of me to, you know, to be cashing these checks? Um, the way that I typically look at stuff like this is even though I'm not currently paying or assume I'm not currently paying unemployment insurance premiums I have in the past as a W2 employee, um, you know, my money and my children's money is being given to Boeing and to the cheesecake factory and all other sorts of things that I don't feel it should be going to is this just me kind of clawing my own money back, uh, so to speak.

And, you know, if this thing does go on for a year, um, I'm, I'm going to be hurting too. So I guess the too long didn't read version is, am I gaming the system by, uh, getting benefits that I'm not necessarily currently in need of? I hate this question.

Um, because it's, it has, it's so difficult and it's so fraught. Um, in 2008 I was laid off from a job. I was working for a marketing and brand management consulting company and they laid me off. I don't think it was, it was right. It was just a little bit before the recession happened.

And so I don't think they laid me off because of the recession as I understood it and think to be true. They laid me off just simply because they chose to reorganize the company. I had been hired into the job. It was kind of a middle level job and the company, it just wasn't really working.

And so they got rid of me and several of my coworkers simultaneously. Now prior to that time I had worked really hard to stabilize my personal finances. I was out of debt. I was doing the Dave Ramsey plan. I was out of debt. I was at a six month emergency fund in the bank and I was, I worked hard to make that happen.

I paid off all my student loans. I was just out of college. I had, uh, I'd worked really hard and I, I felt really good and I felt confident about the work that I had done in my own personal finances. And, um, I was given a, a severance pay.

I forget how much now, but I had some severance pay from the company, which was also nice. It was the first time I'd ever experienced kind of the benefit of working in the corporate world where they give you a nice severance package when you leave instead of just, Hey, here's your last paycheck and get out the door.

Um, but I didn't file for unemployment and I didn't file for unemployment even though I was eligible because I, I felt like I didn't need it. I felt I've always had this, I've wanted to be congruent, ethically congruent with the fact that I, uh, you know, that, that I can take care of myself.

I believe in personal responsibility. I believe in not being a burden to others. I believe that, that needs should go, that money should go to people who need it. And I believe that money should go to people who need it voluntarily based upon the charity of other people. But I have, um, I have, but I didn't need it.

Right. I'm an able-bodied man. I can work. And I just felt like it was, there was no need for me to do it. So I never went and filed for unemployment. Now in the middle of that 2008 crisis, they kept on extending unemployment and fast forward. I lived on my savings for a couple of years for a couple of months.

I worked, looked around and that was when I started working as a financial advisor. Then here I am as a financial advisor and I started in the fall of 2008 and unemployment benefits went on, I think all through 2009. The timeline is a little fuzzy in my head, but they extended it for a significant amount of time.

And here I go as a financial advisor and I had run out of money. I was, I burned through my emergency fund little by little over time. And then as a financial advisor, I was completely underpaid. I didn't make money right in the beginning. And so I was going through my savings and I ran out of money.

And yet here I am working with people who are living on unemployment and they weren't trying to find a job. They were just sitting back and collecting unemployment. And as I, as I'm here, I'm trying to tell them about money. I'm totally broke. And here they are living on the beach in Florida, living on unemployment because they got laid off from their job nine months ago.

And I got so frustrated with that. And I just thought, what a sucker I am. You know, why didn't I do that? Because if I had taken that time and I had spent that time focused on something else instead of focused on, on, you know, what's happening here, basically I was, I felt like a sucker.

And I said, you know what, that's it. Never again. I'm always going to take, I'm always going to take it. Then I went back and I, and I looked at the ethics of, of unemployment. So my employer paid for unemployment insurance, not by choice. It was an insurance program and insurance policy that they paid into and they were given no option for it.

They were coerced by the government into participating in that. I was laid off under all the terms of, of, uh, of the, the whole scenario. And in that situation, I thought, you know, why would I, um, why would I, why shouldn't I have taken it? And so I came to the perspective.

I was like, I'm just gonna take it from now on. Uh, and then the same, I've had the same thing with social security. Like I don't like social security, but am I not going to cash my social security checks? And I had the same thing with basically all government benefits where I don't get a choice.

And so if I don't get a choice, then why shouldn't I take it? And then the vindictive side of my personality comes out where I'm like, ah, you know what, this whole thing is going to collapse. I'm going to hasten the collapse and I'm going to screw the whole system over.

I've for years, I've thought about, you know, I'm going to do a whole show on how to exploit all of the government systems. And I've just never wanted to do that ethically. And then all of a sudden I turn around and I see these trillions of dollars over the last day or two being given to these companies.

And I'm furious. It infuriates me that they would, that they would do that. And I think that's it. Like, why am I trying to live this ethical life of not, not taking from other people, not still like, why don't I just get, get what, get me some and why don't I actually help individuals?

Cause you know, Boeing doesn't need this money. Boeing needs to go bankrupt is what they need to do. Why am I sitting here worrying about, well, maybe I'm, you know, maybe if I create this content, maybe I would be unethical because I'm helping somebody who is, who is a broke to, to, to figure out how to, maybe I'm, you know, worrying about Daniel.

What if I help Daniel sit back and live on, on, on unemployment? It's just, it's infuriating when you see the numbers. And so how I've solved it is just by largely walking away. And by walking away, I feel a lot freer, but I don't expect many people to do that.

You can't, you know, you don't get an option if you're in the United States. And so I've walked away to two cultures that are freer than the United States. And that's helped me to do it. But you know, I still pay taxes. And so I intend to cash my check if they give me a check.

So that's the background of the story is that I came to the conclusion that since I didn't have a choice in the law, that I didn't have a choice in them passing unemployment insurance, I didn't have a choice in it that I should have taken it. And I was a sucker in 2008 for not taking it.

I could have done so many better things with my life and with my finances. If I had taken it, then just simply spending all my savings down, it would have been a lot easier for me to, to have lived on unemployment for a few months until I found a job and then had still had my savings to, than it was for me to spend down my savings and then be totally broke starting a job.

Cause that was, that was really hard. It was really hard. And so I've, the ethics of it are, are generally unclear as far as like, I don't think that there's an, I don't think that since you didn't have a choice in the law, you didn't have a choice in establishing the law.

You didn't have a choice in the coercion. All of your neighbors, right? If you voted for it, well, that's, that's an ethical problem, but all of your neighbors had voted for this, this coercive state. And so if you didn't have a choice, you're following the law along the way by paying your taxes and doing what's expected of you.

You didn't have a choice in these representatives and what they have passed. And so I say cash the checks, cash the checks and then use them for yourself. And then if you have the opportunity to be free of the system, be free of the system. If not save the money, just put the money in the bank and save it and spend it on something else.

And if you want to do something that's ideologically pure, then leverage it for something that's going to make the difference. So if you don't need the money just put it into your giving account and go give it to somebody who needs it more than you. If you want to invest the money into building a website that, that full of screeds against unemployment insurance, then go ahead.

But I say if you're eligible for the checks while, while following the law so that you don't hurt your conscience, I say cash them and use the money. But I understand the dilemma that you're in. It's a really frustrating one. All right. I guess I'm two for two with confirmation bias today.

So I appreciate that answer. You should call in every week and then we'll be, then you can get it every week. That's a good plan. All right. Thanks Daniel. All right. We go to, I don't know, seven two Oh area code. Welcome to the show. How can I serve you today?

Denver, Colorado. Go ahead, please. All right. Denver, Colorado. We'll come back to you. It looks like Dave, you're up Dave. Welcome to the show. How can I serve you today, please? Hey Josh. Thank you. Thank you for your thoughts and comments over the past couple of weeks. Question for you about the way you're thinking about investing in this opportunity.

You've said that you've been waiting for this in terms of an opportunity to get back in. And how do you think about doing that if it's into stocks in terms of actually deploying assets that are on the side and that now is the chance. So I don't intend to invest in stocks.

I am disgusted personally by the stock market. I know that's a strong word. I'm not, I'm not asking anybody to believe what I believe, but even just the last this bailout I consider it just a giant wall street giveaway. I walked away from stocks and mutual funds a number of years ago, not because of any problem with owning stock, right?

I own stock in my own companies and I'm happy to buy stock, but I walked away from wall street just because of the broad, complete immorality in the industry. As far as I see it, it's one of the most corrupt places on the world. If you look at the crony capitalism, what wall street, what wall street does is basically the most important person in a modern large company is the lobbyists who, who you have seen in full force this last week.

They don't even make any pretense at this point in time of, of taking care of their company. And the U S representatives don't even make a pretense of pretending that there's any sense of personal responsibility. There's any risk whatsoever for a stockholder. And so I see it as a, as an incredibly immoral world with people within it, certainly trying to do the best, but in general, the system rewards unethical and immoral behavior.

I also have a very deep concern about many of the industries that the companies are involved in their promulgation of violence around the world with many of the large companies that really bothers me. I have a deep concern about a lot of the ethics inside the companies. And I just came to a point four or five, three or four years ago where I said, I'm not gonna, I can't do this anymore.

I can't have this on my conscience. So kind of the ethical thing, just like the previous question, I can't change the law about my requirement to participate in, in, in unemployment insurance. I'm coerced to do that, but nobody is coercing me to buy stock in a company like Boeing.

Nobody is coercing me to buy stock in a company like Northrop Grumman, right? Nobody is coercing me into owning these companies. And so I don't want that on my conscience. Now I understand that's an extreme position. I'm, I'm expressing it very clearly here because I'm furious at what has happened over the last couple of days.

I'm furious at the US government, taking money that has been extracted with threats of violence from individuals and from companies all around the country, and then turning around and writing huge checks to basically bail out Wall Street, both the financial players in Wall Street and the stockholders of these companies.

And I consider that to be an absolute violation of the principles of, of the free market and completely destructive. And I don't want to be involved in it. So I have no interest or intention of going back to you know, the stock market. I have no interest in investing broadly in that system.

I'm interested in investments that help people and not that harm people. So I can talk about it in a detached way of, okay, well let's talk about the market. You know, is it a good time to get in? But for me, I'm not, I'm not going into that again.

Just because I don't want to be in, I don't, I don't want to arrive at the end of my life and yeah, I've got an extra couple of million bucks here, but it came at this, at this cost to me. Now I'm, again, I'm not saying you're wrong or that you, you behaved immorally.

Those are my opinions. Those are my convictions and the reasons behind them. And I think that we're all free to do in a situation like this, what you need to do. So the technical answer just from a detached observer is I would say that a lot of it comes down to your time perspective.

If you are looking to grab the exact bottom of, of the stock market, is this it? I don't think so. But it doesn't really matter. If you've got a list of companies that you're interested in, that you think you'd like to own, you know, 10, 15, 20 years from now, it's hard to believe that these companies that are so big and so influential will not be worth more in the future.

And they're, they're in many ways fairly valued today. Could they still fall more? Maybe, but I've always been attracted to the longterm value investing proposition and to just simply buying companies that are strong and that, that are, that are good. And so I think there are some, some companies that are fairly priced at the moment.

And so if you believe that they're fairly priced, I think that, I think that it's fine to get in. If, but, but I'm not predicting the bottom. I'm not putting the top. A lot of it depends on what I led the show out with of this analysis. And we just simply don't know what's going to happen here in the coming days.

And so the market's going to, to respond to that. I am in the days to come, I am going to talk about though the market in general. And I've, I've spoken with some, some of my private clients just about this that I increasingly wonder because of some of these ethical issues, some of the monetary issues, et cetera, I do increasingly wonder about the longterm value of the stock market.

The basic, the basic idea is always don't say this time is different. Right. And don't say, don't bet against America. But I, I, I, at this point, I reject those, those, those statements. They're logical fallacies. You can say, you can acknowledge the fact that the United States of America has been historically strong while also recognizing that there are lots of historically strong countries, cultures, et cetera, throughout history that have changed and are no longer so historically strong.

You can look at that and you can say that this time you can say, don't think that this time is different, but you have to also acknowledge that this time could be different, that there could be changes. And I think that there are major systemic headwinds at the very least, but they need to be called headwinds, if not major opportunities for disaster in the future in the United States of America and for many of these companies.

Now to the extent that things can continue to run as normal, where Wall Street rewards these companies for taking huge risks, where the companies pay no attention to thrift, pay no attention to preparing themselves for market downturns, but they just simply spend like crazy. Don't, you know, buy their stock back to enrich all of their directors and managers.

And then to the extent that they are bailed out by the US taxpayer and by the Federal Reserve and the tax to the extent that the US citizens don't care, but just simply rejoice that the money's there in their 401k, maybe this will go on. You know, maybe it will, maybe it'll go on for my entire lifetime and it'll never collapse.

But I, I really, I really wonder about how you can have a system that's so clearly unethical that rewards such, such terrible business behavior. I don't see how that continues with the same, the same sense of strength over time. And that's where we get back to this moral hazard question.

I'll try to cover this philosophically, but the moral hazard is real. I just compared 2008 to 2020. 2008, everyone said don't bail out the companies because it'll create moral hazard. And those arguments were largely ignored. Now at first they were listened to and then they were largely ignored because all the US congressional representatives got scared when they said, "Oh, the whole world's going to collapse." Well, David Stockman's book, The Great Deformation, that convinced me that it was unnecessary.

Now maybe Stockman is not agreed on by everybody, but he convinced me that it was entirely unnecessary and that the people that at that point cried out to their representatives and said, "Don't bail these people out." They were right. And the representatives were wrong. Well, now in 2020, what do you see?

You of course see a historic economic change, but these companies don't even bother to, they don't even make a pretense anymore. It's like, "Oh, let's go send our lobbyist and get some money." It's, to me, I find it disgusting. So I don't, I'm disinterested in the subject except from a trading perspective and I'll let other people do that.

What I am, I do think that there will be opportunities in the real estate market. I consider private business and real estate to be less ethically troublesome for me personally than those large companies. And so I'm actively looking for, I've been waiting for a recession so that I can build a real estate portfolio at reasonable prices.

I've been hoarding cash and watching for that. And so that's what I'm looking for. But the problem is it's just simply too soon right now to be engaged in any kind of real estate discussion. The path ahead is so unclear and real estate is such a long timeframe that there's no immediate opportunity that's clear at the moment.

So that's my answer Dave, probably not the answer you're expecting, but that's my answer. Yep, no, I follow and thanks for your thoughts on it. All right. My pleasure. We go now to, looks like Darson. Darson, welcome to the show. How can I serve you today, sir? Lost him.

All right. We go back to Denver. Let's see if Denver is here. Denver, welcome to the show. How can I serve you today? Hey Josh, I'm here in Denver. I actually just logged in to listen. So no question today. No question today. Well, I think that wraps us up on terms of callers.

So I am glad that, glad that you all called in. I hope I wasn't too strong with my language. I do, I do wrestle with that. Sometimes I'm prone to hyperbole just in my own thinking. I try to control that, but I've been forthright. I'll try to, as soon as the details become clear of this bill and the mechanism, I'll try to serve you with some information on that as far as the stimulus bill and how you can, how you can do that.

But I guess in closing, as I create a little closing speech here, I would say one of the most important things to learn right now in this current economic crisis is just simply what a total house of cards we are. A little bit of vulgar language warning ahead, but I saw this, I saw this tweet by some random guy on, on Twitter and he wrote, he wrote this tweet.

He says, "LOL we're a bunch of paycheck to paycheck employees living in apartments owned by paycheck to paycheck landlords and working for paycheck to paycheck corporations. LMAO whole economy full of broke bitches. Whose idea was this?" I just thought I couldn't set it better myself. I would have of course used less vulgar language, but so there's a truth in that that's pretty clearly expressed is if you thought that all of a sudden we're strong, just look around the world right now.

What I thought I was, I've always thought, okay, Josh, you're too much of a catastrophist. You're too negative. Why are you being so pessimistic? Be positive, right? Everything go better. We're barely two weeks into this thing and I acknowledge the widespread in the United States. I mean, we're barely two weeks into like the shutdowns, the lockdowns, et cetera.

I acknowledge the widespread hurt. I feel that deeply emotionally, I'm very filled with empathy for those who are hurting. I want to serve you if you're hurting. I know that we're all hurting. We all know people who are losing their jobs. I have a lot of listeners in this audience who've had to lay off huge staff and that's distinctly painful.

I remember the first time I laid somebody off and I just thought like this is huge. I remember just the weight of that. I never had a lot of employees. You think about the weight of an entrepreneur who's supporting dozens or hundreds of families with their business and they have to go and lay people off.

It's difficult. It's awful for the employees. It's awful for the employers. It's terrible. But we're not even two weeks into these widespread shutdowns and lockdowns. And yet in the middle of that, everyone's got to come running for, everyone's got to come running for money. I expect this to get worse economically.

I'm optimistic and hoping for the best in the virus and I'm hoping that this cannot be, you know, one of those generation defining events like previous depressions, like previous flu outbreaks, et cetera. I'm hoping it's not that. I'm prepared for it, but hoping it's not that. But at the end of the day, even if we get things better, look around.

If this turns out to be a short term scenario, we're a bunch of paycheck to paycheck employees living in apartments owned by paycheck to paycheck landlords and working for paycheck to paycheck to corporations. Whole economy from top to bottom, full of broke people. That doesn't inspire a lot of confidence in me.

When in less than two weeks of a shutdown, you have to have what seems like, which is certainly it's an overstatement, but what seems like every company, every big company in your S&P 500 saying, we need money, you know, give us money. Now, of course that's an overstatement and exaggeration, but that's kind of the feeling that you get.

It's like, well let's send our lobbyists and let's go get some money. Where's that money come from? Right? It's all made up. It's all fake. It's all printed. $2 trillion stimulus bill. You didn't earn that. You didn't pay for it. Government was already a trillion dollars in debt. Sorry, trillion dollar deficit, already a trillion dollar deficit.

So it was add another 2 trillion on it while simultaneously the GDP declines by, you know, whatever percent, 20%, 30%, who knows. And tax revenue is going to go down. So I mean, the deficit this year is going to be horrendous. And that's in addition to the trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars made up by the federal reserve.

Now, I don't want to end on a catastrophic note. I want to be a voice of optimism, of positivity. I really do. But I think we've got to recognize what a nightmare, what an absolute nightmare. Now I'm grateful that personally I'm doing pretty well. And I'm grateful that I've received so many messages from you that have told me I'm doing well.

You heard earlier, Daniel said, you know, I'm doing well. It doesn't take that much to be prepared for most catastrophes. You know, it's not that hard to have two weeks of savings. Anybody can have two weeks of savings. It's not that hard for most companies to have a few weeks of savings.

Anybody can do that. Now, just because a company is laying people off, doesn't mean they don't have savings, but it's pretty shocking to see how fast things can change. So the key is preparation works. Financial prudence works. Being conservative with your money works. Planning ahead works. Choosing quality investments works.

Everything works, but we're surrounded by people who, and a system that rewards the worst of behaviors. Those are my long-term concerns. Now, there's going to be opportunity left, right, and center through this thing. There's opportunity right now, possibly in the investing markets. I know there's a lot of people who've been waiting for a decline in market values to be able to get in.

I don't think you'd be a big mistake. If you've got a, you know, 15 years and you're saying, what is 2035 look like? I'm not convinced that the world is going to fall apart and all these companies are going to collapse. Everything is still there. I don't, I'm not that catastrophic right now.

I really not. So maybe this is, you know, if you're young and you want to invest in the markets, probably a good plan. It's hard to see, especially given the current scenario, it's hard to see those things not working. And when you've got the government backing up your investment, you got to say it's pretty good investment, right?

Kind of like government backed mortgage loans, right? If the government's going to backstop you and you can't lose money and you know that your shares in Boeing corporation are never going to go to zero because the government will step in and bail them out. Well, you can't, you're not stupid for investing in those markets.

And so it's probably a good thing. I think there's going to be opportunities increasing for new businesses, new business adjustments. There's going to be big, big changes in society from this, no matter what, even the most optimistic scenario, there's going to be change and change creates opportunities for those who have a mind for it.

So be looking for that. Stabilize your personal finances as much as you can. Cash your checks and help your neighbors. That's the best I got. I am searching for something positive, but that's what I got. Anyway, in closing, if you'd like to join me for next week's Q and a show, I would love for you to do that.

Go to patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance. Join me on that show. Patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance would love to talk with you next week. Last few days on my March madness consulting deal. If you would like to engage in a personal consultation with me, email me joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com and I will give you the details of that. My hourly rates are discounted from $400 an hour to $250 an hour.

And I've been on the phone nonstop helping people, help people heading into bankruptcy, help people with huge amounts of money, help people with businesses that are booming right now and businesses that are failing. So if you'd like to work with me personally, reach out to me by email joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com.

In closing, also, let me just mention again, I had a bunch of new people buying my how to survive and thrive during the coming economic crisis course. I thank you for that. Running a sale on all my courses. You can go to radicalpersonalfinance.com/store and then basically the last week, if you would like to buy my radical preparedness course, go to radicalpreparedness.com.

That's very practical. 29 bucks minus 20%, whatever that comes out to be. You're not going to get a better deal off than that. I'm finishing that course. It's 24 bucks, super cheap. But I'm finishing that course this week, and then I'm going to reshoot it and the price is going to be a lot higher.

So if you would like to get in while things are inexpensive, if you're a deal hound, go to radicalpreparedness.com and sign up for that course there. Radicalpreparedness.com. Thank you for being here and I'll be back with you soon.