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Today in the show, we're gonna talk about how to profit from recession. We are right now in the beginning of a significant recession. Hopefully it's just a recession. Hopefully we don't have to talk about how to profit from a depression, although the basic concepts are going to be the same.

But we're gonna talk today about how to profit from a recession. And I wanna start to get you thinking about opportunity, because in the middle of every crisis, you can always find opportunity. You can find ways to improve your life, to improve your business, to improve your income, to improve your investments.

There's always ways to improve every single part of your life. And it's important that you always look for the opportunity in the middle of difficulty. If you look for the opportunity in the middle of difficulty, you will often find it. Whereas if you don't look for it, and you just succumb to the difficulty, you will often just find nothing but bleak gray clouds all around.

Every setback is an opportunity for improvement. Every failure provides you with an opportunity for improvement. Every single one. Now that sounds just like some kind of platitude that you would stick on a card somewhere, but it's really true. Every setback, every failure provides you with an opportunity for improvement.

One of my favorite sayings, as trite as it may sound to you, it's real to me. Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn. Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn. And so I want you to be thinking positively in this time. I want you to be looking for opportunities, because this time may very well set the tone may very well set the foundation for your future success.

This time right now may very well set the cornerstone underneath your fortune. This time right now is when you need to be preparing for and planning for your comeback, if you need to come back. Now I'm gonna say something here that is hard to say without it sounding arrogant.

It's hard to say without it sounding a little tone deaf. It's hard to say without it sounding, I don't know what other words, just a little bit proud. Please know that I'm not intending that to be the case, but I wanna speak honestly with you and hope to inspire you.

I'm doing awesome right now. I'm doing absolutely awesome right now. On April 7, 2020, as I record this, I am doing great. My family is doing well. My business is doing well. My personal life is going well. My finances are in great shape. I'm doing great right now. But it's because of some of the experiences that I've gone through before.

Now I understand that not everybody can do great. I understand that not everybody has a business that can profit from a recession. I understand that, I get that, and that's why I said I don't wanna sound tone deaf, but the reality is you need to recognize that you don't have to suffer in difficult times.

And so if you're suffering right now, I want you to learn and recognize from the fact that that suffering is due to some choices that you've made. You don't have to be suffering right now. There are a few reasons for suffering that are truly outside of our control, truly outside of our grasp.

But most of the reasons we really suffer can be mitigated with good planning. And I've done some things because of previous experiences that I've had that have helped to position me for this time. I wanna give you some examples. I started building a business in 2008. I got laid off right at the beginning of the recession of 2008, the so-called Great Recession.

That was when I got laid off. And that layoff was a big surprise to me. It was a real shock. I did not expect to get laid off. I thought, they're lucky to have me. I'm Joshua Sheets. I work hard, I'm a good employee, they're lucky to have me.

And all of a sudden, they told me they didn't want me, and that was kind of a crushing thing for me. Now, thankfully, I had prepared for that, and so it wasn't as crushing as it can be in other places. But at that time, I didn't have a plan.

I didn't have a clear goal, a clear career plan. I didn't have a specific list of things that I was working towards. And because of that, I vowed, I'm never gonna let this happen again. I'm never gonna be in this situation without as many ideas as I have now.

I'm never gonna be in this situation without backup sources of income, without backup sources of savings, et cetera. And I resolved that I wasn't gonna be in that situation. I wasn't gonna be vulnerable again. And then over the years, as my responsibilities have grown, in 2008, I was single, I wasn't supporting wife or children.

I did pretty easy for me to survive in those circumstances. But over the years, as my responsibilities have grown, I vowed, I said, "This is my responsibility to care for these people, "and I've done certain things along the way "that have helped me right now." So if you're scared, if you're hurting, I want you to know that you can do better.

You can do things that are gonna protect you. But I also learned some lessons through that period. I met with a lot of people that were hurting. I met with a lot of people whose businesses were failing, but I met with a lot of people who were doing well.

I met with a lot of people who were capitalizing on the opportunities. The 2008 Great Recession, when I cut my financial planning teeth, showed me that there are opportunities in the midst of chaos for those who are ready to take action. And so I've been preparing, personally, for a recession for years.

Now, I was wrong on the timing. I thought that there'd be recession in 2015 or 2016. There wasn't. Then I thought it'd be 2017. There wasn't. 2018. There wasn't. I haven't figured out why I was wrong back then, and I think it's important to acknowledge that even in your own thinking.

As they say, a broken clock can be right, wrong, right. How can you butcher a phrase like that? A broken clock can be right twice per day, right? So even if you, and that's the thing about recessions, some people make a professional hobby out of calling for a recession every single year, and about once a decade or so, they're right.

My favorite old joke is that economists have reliably predicted all 24 of the last four recessions. There's a truth to that. Where it's easy to call for doom and gloom, and yet it doesn't happen, well, people don't go on. So I was wrong on the timing, but because I expected it, I did some things in my finances that have insulated me for now, and I don't regret that.

In fact, I'm thrilled with it. Another time, I'll talk more about some examples of what I'm glad of, but what I've learned is that I used to think I was a big risk taker. I used to think that I wanted to take risk, but I've learned since then that I'm much more conservative than that, and that conservatism is expressed in different ways.

What I previously made the mistake of was I previously made the mistake of thinking that because I was comfortable with stock market volatility, that that somehow meant that I was a risk taker, but I've learned I'm not. I'm a conservative individual, and I don't see any reason to take risks, and especially as my responsibilities grow, it just seems more and more foolish to me to take risks.

So if you're hurting right now, recognize that there's some lessons in that. The first thing that you should do is you should sit down and start writing out the lessons that are applicable to you. I'm gonna give you suggestions and ideas and examples on how to profit from this time, but if you're not in a position to profit, take heed and make sure that next time you are, because recessions are coming along pretty regularly.

It's kind of like the seasons, right? We're always going through seasons. You've got spring, summer, fall, winter, spring, summer, fall, winter, and similar things happen economically. There are cycles, economic cycles, and if you'll work with those cycles, you can enhance your results. Now, now that I've given some ideas for those of you who are struggling, let's talk about opportunities.

Some of these opportunities are gonna cost you money, some of them are not, but these are just ideas to spark your creativity. I wanna begin with some suggestions for individuals. What are some opportunities that you have to profit right now from this recession? Well, I think one of the first things that is obvious to many people, because of the unique nature of this particular recession, where work from home is not only encouraged heavily, it's flat out required, this gives you the chance to try on a work from home lifestyle, which is awesome.

That gives you a real opportunity to get in there right now and say, do I like this? Do I like working from home? For me, for years, working from home was a dream. I had a dream from the time I was 15 years old. I wanted to sit in front of a laptop and be able to work from an internet cafe or work from home, and that was a dream that I had for many years.

But then when I achieved that, I realized, it's nice, does open up a lot of opportunities, but it's not perfect. There are some things that are real downsides to it. There are some things I really miss. I miss going to an office every day. I miss the camaraderie. I miss the ability to interact with people who are not like me, just because I'm in a work environment.

I miss the separation sometimes. I think it's healthier for my family if I were to go away to an office and then come back in. It's a different lifestyle. Now, on the flip side, there are a whole bunch of opportunities that are afforded by a work from home lifestyle.

It gives you tremendous flexibility in your daily activities, tremendous flexibility in where you live, which opens up a huge world of incredible financial planning opportunities, everything from being able to live in a lower cost of living place to being able to live on the other side of the world, work whatever schedule you like.

It's pretty cool. But right now, if your job allows it in any way, you get a chance to try it on for free. Don't even have to change your job. This question is, do you like it? Do you like it? Think about it, embrace it. Now, if you're still adjusting, what I'll tell you is that what I learned when I started working from home full-time is there is definitely an adjustment period.

Don't expect everything to be perfect all of a sudden. Give it some time. But at this point, if you're working from home, you've probably been working home for a few weeks and just test it out, see what you like. If you like it, you may have an opportunity right now that is awesome to be able to make this a more permanent part of your lifestyle.

What I would commend to you is that if you have a job that allows you to work from home, and if you're finding that it seems like a good fit for you, I would work day and night to be hardcore productive. I would work day and night to be producing so much, so much excellent work that your bosses will never want you to come back to the office.

If you can prove to them that you get more work done from home, that you're able to make more things happen from home, you have the opportunity to make this a more permanent part of your lifestyle. So don't slack off. Now, you're probably not slacking off just 'cause you wanna keep your job.

I think more and more of us are appreciating the fact that we still have work. But the way that you handle your productivity during this time will provide you with more opportunities in the future. So work hard. Work hard to demonstrate to your bosses that this should be a regular part of your life and your lifestyle.

Because if you can get that, I'm telling you, it's not perfect for everyone, obviously not, but it is something that opens up horizons in a way that you would not believe. This may very well be one of the big trends going forward in the future. This trend that allows people to live and work from wherever they want to.

This may be the thing that kind of pushes us over. People are predicting for a long time, everyone's gonna work from home in the future 'cause we're all just gonna sit and type on our computers and communicate with one another, and video chat, and video conference, and everything. It's gonna come a huge way.

But the trends have been lagging behind it. And in fact, in some ways, the trends have been the opposite direction. I thought that we would move strongly in that work from home direction, but the trends over the past few years, especially with many businesses, has been that they've been rolling back their work from home programs, rolling back the opportunities for individuals to actually do that.

This might change that, but it's largely gonna depend on how effective it is for you and how effective it is for you and your coworkers. Now, if you don't like working from home, what I would encourage you is take note of the fact that you don't like working from home.

Recognize, I don't like this. I don't wanna do this, because you'll be a lot more happy when you do go back to the office. You'll appreciate it a lot more, which means you'll be able to bring more energy and zest to that work. It's also, however, something that you should think about in terms of your future lifestyle design.

Because if you don't like working from home, are you really gonna like being at home full-time if you're working towards something like retirement? I ask you to consider it. Next opportunity for individuals. I would encourage you, use this time as an opportunity to cut your expenses to the bone and see what that's like.

Now, I think this is prudent for all of us at this time of great uncertainty. One of the things that's just a prudent part of financial planning, when you're facing uncertainty, cut back any expenses that you possibly can in order to hoard cash. On a business level, this is difficult, because usually payroll is the biggest expense of most companies, and yet your biggest asset is employees.

And if you start cutting employees, that comes with all kinds of problems down the road. But for individuals, those same things don't occur. And what's really unique about this current crisis, when we're all stuck in our houses and everything is closed, is it gives you the opportunity to just simply cut easily.

I've done consulting work with people, say, "Yeah, my personal expenses are a little bit high, "but we've got these nice lifestyle things." And I'm like, "Listen, everything's closed, "just cut it now. "Cut everything. "Cut your expenses to the bone, see what it's like, "and then add back only what you really miss.

"Add back what's really important to you." Sometimes, one of the best strategies if you want to change something in your life, renegotiate some commitments, is to go through some massive change. I've become convinced that this should be, in many circumstances, a primary strategy. A lot of times, people sit around and they work for little bits of change.

I watch people, they want to get rid of stuff, and they go through this idea and they say, "I want to declutter, "so I'm gonna start with my dresser drawer, "and I'm gonna do one thing every day, "and I'm gonna throw one thing every day." Maybe that works for you.

If it does, great. I see that it does work for some people. What I find for me is I find it very hard to stick with one thing every day for very long at all. I find it easier to just throw everything upside down and make some massive change, especially if it's a change that I want, if there's a reason for that change.

Sometimes, massive change, massive lifestyle change, massive disruption provides you with a convenient excuse to renegotiate your entire life. And it's easier to tell people why you're doing something. Let's say, for example, you've been frustrated by living in a big house. You've been frustrated by facing down all these mountains of stuff, and you've wanted to become a minimalist, but your parents are gonna judge you and criticize you for being a minimalist.

Well, then all of a sudden, you get laid off. Tell your parents, "Sorry, guys, I got laid off. "I gotta get rid of all this stuff and sell the house." Gives you a unique opportunity to negotiate those weird cultural commitments that we have. So use this as a chance to change your expenses.

It's good, prudent, defensive financial planning to cut, cut, cut. Stinks for the companies, of course, but it's good for you. And then add back what you really miss. Could be a real opportunity for you. I've even done this, recommended it to people even on an annual basis. I don't do this much anymore.

It's not necessarily, I don't think it's the best way to do it, but I've given the advice to people. Just listen, you wanna change your spending drastically? Call all your credit card companies, report all your cards lost or stolen. You may have lost them to the shredder today, but report them all as lost or stolen, and get brand new credit cards with brand new numbers issued to you.

And that in and of itself will just cut all of the expenses that are billed to those and force you to renegotiate everything. And you'll add back the things that you really miss, but you'll probably save some money in the process. So think about ways that you can use this to help you.

That's on the income side for individuals. Now for businesses, some of these things have corollaries. For example, for businesses, I think this is a really interesting time for you to try out the work from home lifestyle. Does it work for your business? Does it work for your team? Does your team like it?

Is it good for them? I don't think it's good for all businesses. I think there are a lot of businesses that even though they could work with kind of disconnected, spread around workforces all around the globe, it's not ideal. It's better for them that they have one physical location where people are physically working.

But I do think it can be a useful option for some people. And so you have a good chance to test it right now. At the very least, use this time of disruption to provide you with the opportunities to build those backup systems. Even if your team can be in one physical location, and even if that is the best thing for your business, I think it's very valuable that your business have backup systems, that you have the infrastructure in place so that if your central business location were disrupted, your employees could spread out.

That would be a simple part of a disaster recovery plan. For example, a fire. Let's say that you had a fire, just one simple building fire at your primary office. Well, part of your backup plan for that kind of event would be to have offsite data storage, would be to have a way that you could have equipment so that your employees, assuming your employees are safe, your employees could go and spend time in other places.

So it can be part of your emergency planning. Go ahead and figure out the technology that works. In today's world, the technology that works when everybody's outside of the office is in many cases the same technology that you would use inside the office. So use that to your benefit.

Use this opportunity to see how you could build a more flexible team even for the longterm. One of the things that I've become really interested in is a business concept and have sought to employ in my own business is how can I make my business more scalable by not relying on full-time employees, but rather relying on contracted services?

It's a really interesting option. Can I use a company that provides me with a team of virtual assistants that work for me rather than individually contracting with one employee? Because when I individually contract with one employee, I go through those phases of inefficiency where in the beginning, they probably have more capacity than I have work and then you build up and you expand, but that's a big financial commitment.

It's also just a big commitment of, it puts a lot of weight on you when you're responsible for other people. So if you can use contracted services, sometimes you can minimize that financial commitment. You could build a more scalable business, but you can also bring less financial risk to your life.

This I think could really be an opportunity for many businesses, because if your business has the opportunity to work virtually and you're finding that that can work, then now you may be able to distribute your work around the globe. You may be able to participate in labor markets that are much more cost-effective for your business.

And that could provide you with a more resilient business. If you've got a labor force in a high cost of living place, very high cost of employment, United States, Canada, someplace in Western Europe, and all of a sudden business starts to go down, you have to cut pretty quickly.

But if your business could take advantage of a lower cost of living workforce, then sometimes you can just afford to keep that going. And even though you have excess capacity, the numbers work out better for you 'cause you have a more efficient business. Think about it. I think one of the big changes we're gonna be seeing in the future is a lot of businesses have been exposed as being overly reliant on China specifically.

They focus so much on one country that when one country shut down, it caused major problems. And so it's an opportunity to say, "Hey, that didn't work, let's change it." Now, in some cases, that means some American firms will outsource more to Mexico or outsource more to other parts of Asia or bring more jobs back to the United States of America.

I think it's remarkable if you look at what's happening right now in the markets, not talking about stock markets, just simply what's happening in the flow of goods and services and the flow of capital and the flow of products, and you see how exposed so many industries are, it's remarkable.

And you wonder, was all of the efficiency worth it? There have been people who've been warning about this for decades, but I think there are gonna be some major changes because many countries all around the world are seeing how exposed they are when all of their industries are outsourced to other countries.

We'll see what happens. Now, what about some ideas for you in expanding your operations? I think one of the biggest opportunities right now is to expand for businesses and for individuals. You can either use this time and sit back and be filled with anxiety and frustration, or you can make a bold, aggressive plan to press forward.

Let's talk about for individuals first. One of the things, especially if you're laid off right now or you run the risk of getting laid off, you should recognize that your safe, secure job really never was. I've always looked at that safe, secure job idea as somehow that provides security.

I'm like, you got one customer. That's basically how it is. If you're an employee working for a company, you've got exactly one customer. And if you lose that one customer, you lose 100% of your revenue. That's a very, very unsafe position to be in. Now, not everybody is gonna go out and build up multiple customers.

Not everybody's gonna work for multiple employers. I'm not trying to convince you of that. But if that bothers you, the fact that you can lose 100% of your income if you lose one customer, I highly recommend to you you choose a different path. Again, not trying to brag, but I'm thankful.

It was built intentionally. I was worried about that risk, and I said, I don't want a business that relies on one customer. I don't want a business that relies on even a couple of big customers. When I first started in the financial planning business, I remembered I would get so excited about big customers, and then something would always happen.

I'd have a big client or a big potential client, and they'd buy something from me, and then all of a sudden they'd cancel it. They'd buy a big insurance policy, and then they'd cancel it. And then I'd have these huge clawback of commissions that would just totally disrupt my life.

And I came to the point, I was like, this is crazy. I appreciate a big sale, right? We all do. It's nice to have one big customer who pays you $100,000 a year to show up 40 hours a week. That's great. But on the other hand, that comes with a lot of risk, and it comes with a lot of pain when you lose that one customer.

And I said, I'm not gonna be dependent on one or even a few big customers ever again. I want lots of customers, so that, hey, if I lose 100 customers, I lose a tiny percentage of my business. That's one of the things that I've appreciated very much in this current recession.

I've not lost business. I've gained business. I've gained a ton of business, partly because of having that wide platform where I have a lot of customers, partly also that I've chosen to try it over the years. Once I realized that my strategy of serving the broke 17-year-old kid who I've always wanted to find my show and help him out, once I realized that that was a total failure, I said, well, I'll just go ahead and serve rich people.

And the great thing about serving rich people, and not being facetious, but if you serve rich people effectively, rich people always have money. I would always recommend it to you. If you're looking for an opportunity in your business, it's just always seemed, I guess I learned this years ago probably, again, in 2008, I read a lot of Tom Stanley's books.

At that time, he was a very influential person for me. I read all his books. And the thing that he pointed out is he pointed out how many times wealthy entrepreneurs would encourage their children to become service providers to wealthy people. They'd be service providers of medical services or of legal services or of accounting services, et cetera.

Because there was a huge degree of security in that. And entrepreneurs often recognized how risky the pathway of entrepreneurship really is, while simultaneously understanding that if you can serve wealthy people with those needed services, that'll be useful for you. And that's been one thing that's been on my mind for over a decade now, is that if I serve wealthy people, wealthy people are always gonna have money.

One wealthy family might lose all their money, right? They might have a legal issue and whatnot. But if you serve wealthy people, wealthy people always have money. And so it's a very valuable, resilient strategy that you can put into your business, is serve wealthy people. And so my business has been doing well 'cause I serve wealthy people.

And Joshua doesn't cost all that much compared to the value of his ideas. There's a very good value proposition, and so it works well. So think about how you can implement those kinds of strategies in your business. Can you expand from here and start to serve multiple employers? If you've lost your job, yes, should you get another job?

I think you should. But maybe you don't get another full-time job that keeps you committed where you don't have opportunities on your own to go ahead and bring other customers on. Go ahead and pick up a job, but make a plan that you're not gonna depend on one company ever again in the future, one opportunity ever again in the future.

I think some of the lessons that we're learning right now are so valuable. For example, let's say that you built a real estate strategy and you were building everything on Airbnb. The debacle that has been Airbnb investing, or rental market for investors over the last couple months demonstrates the real risk of non-diversification.

There are a lot of investors who are losing everything right now because their plan was to buy five rental houses and to rent them all out on Airbnb, and that worked great until Airbnb imploded. Now, will that come back? Probably. Airbnb certainly has the biggest name, but man, when Airbnb changed their cancellation policy and said that all of the Airbnb customers could all of a sudden cancel everything and have all that money come back from the Airbnb hosts in what was, now, Airbnb justified it under their extraordinary circumstances clause, but that put a lot of people in a tough spot.

So we gotta learn from these lessons and say that didn't work. I need to be more well-diversified. Now, in the middle of that system, look and see what kind of diversification works. If you had a few houses in the suburbs of a not very popular city, there's a good chance that you have no rentals right now if you're in that short-term rental marketplace.

On the other hand, maybe there are locations where it does work. So always think about what are the biggest risks? I've been astounded at the risks that we're facing right now just to continue on this theme of investing for just a moment. I never, never imagined a situation, as much as I've thought about risk, I never would have imagined a situation in which states would say to landlords, "You cannot evict your clients, your tenants.

"You cannot evict your tenants." And in which states would say, governments would say to utility providers, "You can't cut off services." I don't know. Maybe somebody out there thought of that, but I didn't think we were in that kind of world. Well, fool me once, shame on me, right?

Or shame on you. Fool me, I'm butchering, my apologies. I'm butchering every single one of my cliches today. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I'm not gonna make that mistake again. It's an interesting argument for crossing jurisdictions. Right, it's an interesting argument where if most of your rentals are in Illinois, there might be value in having some rentals in Indiana or Wisconsin, because there are different laws.

If all of your rentals are in New York, you might wanna also have some rentals in some other places. So you think about that. But we're facing risks that demonstrate the importance of diversification. So learn from these things. Build bigger income streams, build wider markets, try to work in markets where there's a bigger moat.

That was the point I was making when trying to work with wealthy people. Wealthy people always have money. Maybe you work in a market that is essential, right? That provides you with certain benefits. Grocery store owners are not going bankrupt right now. That's good. Gym owners are, right? It's bad to go bankrupt, but think, is there some way that I could adjust this to lower the risk?

I don't know if there's a solution for every industry, for every business. In fact, I know there's not. But I know that intelligent, thoughtful people, when they face serious risk, can think about the mitigating factors of that and make better decisions next time. Let me pivot to some personal things that you can do.

I've talked a lot about business here. There's clearly an opportunity right now and in the coming days for buying good investments. So right now, if there are investments out there that you consider to be fairly priced, get busy buying them. Buy investments if you consider them to be fairly priced.

I think that we should all have basically a buy sheet of here are the kinds of things that I want to invest in. Here is a list of investments. Here are assets that I want to own and here is what I would consider to be a fair price. Now, the reason why most people don't think this way is because we're basically, a lot of it is just modern portfolio theory.

We're baked into the idea that the way that you invest is through a mutual fund. You dollar cost average into the mutual fund over time and you buy and hold forever because the market is efficient. I'm not arguing against that necessarily. If that's your theory, then you should be buying right now.

But I've always been more attracted to the value strategy, the idea of this is what I think the value of this asset really is. Here's my argument as to why I think this asset is this valuable. And here's my buy price. And I'll buy as much as I can at this price.

Now, every investment has that kind of valuation that can be done. You can do that valuation on a company and on their stock. You can do that valuation on a piece of property. You can do that valuation on a pickup truck. You can do that valuation on almost anything.

You can come up with a formula and you can say, this is what this is worth to me. And so if I see this for sale at this price, I will buy. So I'm looking hard for those deals right now. Now, the markets that I'm interested in may not be the markets that you're interested in, but figure out what markets you're interested in and invest.

There are deals now available and there will be deals available all around the world in all kinds of interesting markets right now. This is a time that you can get busy investing if you're positioned for that. One of the things that I have, one of the things that 2008 convinced me of was the value of simply sitting back and waiting for the investment markets to be in your favor.

Over the past years, I've given advice again and again and again to people. And I've said, listen, don't invest if it's not a good deal. Just sit and wait, stockpile cash. There's nothing wrong with stockpiling cash and sitting and waiting. Because when I think about the outcomes of good investing for individuals, what I observe is that you only need a couple of wins in your life to be set up really well.

You're not managing a mutual fund. You're not managing a hedge fund where your performance is gonna be reported and compared to all the other investment managers. You're just managing your life. And in your life, you probably only need a couple of wins. You need a couple of good deals here and there.

And if you'll put together a couple of wins and not lose big in the interim, you can be wealthy and you can stay wealthy. Meanwhile, if you suffer a couple of big losses, those losses can wipe you out for decades. Which is why I increasingly think it pays to be conservative.

Now, that word conservative is not perfect 'cause it's so subjective. I think there are times that you go all in. And there are times that the losses are not so significant. And you gotta think about those things. You gotta judge those opportunities. I'm not saying don't take advantage of an opportunity when you see it.

What I'm saying is take advantage of the opportunities when they're there, but don't chase an opportunity today, this month, this year, if it's not there. It's a mistake that so many people do. They buy, buy, buy because they have to buy, buy, buy instead of waiting for buying to be the clearly correct thing to do.

Again, I like to use real estate 'cause it's so intuitive. But if you just bought, bought, bought because you had to and went all in on Airbnb, if you didn't have enough room, sometimes things didn't work out. I'd encourage you, talk to some older investors. And what I find in talking to older investors, more experienced investors, is they're often willing to simply wait, to simply observe and to wait and to judge where we are right now, but to be patient.

I deeply hate using Warren Buffett as an example. He's so overused and I think any financial commentator can use Warren Buffett to prove any argument that they want. But I'm gonna take that bait and just simply say, observe how much cash Berkshire Hathaway was sitting on. Now, part of that was uniquely their problem that they have so much, they're so huge, they have a hard time investing their cash.

But observe how much cash they're sitting on. Why should you run your life any differently? I sound like I beat the same thing constantly, don't be scared to sit on cash. But if I overuse it, I'm sorry, but it's because it's a lesson that I had to learn and unlearn from the difference between what I observed, what I learned from kind of pop personal finance world, which said, invest, make sure you put your money into your 401k every month.

And what I observed wealthy people doing. And I observed that wealthy people would just sit on money, sit on cash, they were prepared for opportunity. And they would wait for those buying opportunities. And I became convinced for myself, I became convinced that the key thing to do was to always have the ability, have the dry powder, have the ability to pounce when you see a really good deal.

And a couple of really good deals, whatever good deals mean to you, a couple of really good deals can make you for life and set you completely financially free. But you can't force them. You have to wait and be prepared for them. And I think you'll see that proved out in the coming months.

So buy investments if you consider them to be fairly priced. If you don't consider them to be fairly priced, then wait. Next, shop for consumption items. Start your shopping now. If you've got some consumption items that have been on your list, now is the time to start shopping for them.

We don't know how long this crisis will go on. We of course hope it'll be short, but whether it's short or long, there are opportunities for you. Here's what I see happening as of April, 2020. I don't see a lot of weakness in the used marketplace. I don't see a lot of weakness in the used car marketplace yet.

I don't see a lot of weakness in the used boat marketplace. I don't really see a lot of weakness in the housing marketplace right now. I think this change has been so fast that most people are just sitting and waiting. Where I do think there's starting to be weakness is in the new marketplace.

So if you've been thinking about buying a new car, this is the time that I'd be negotiating hard. The new car business has completely fallen apart, and this is a time that I would be going in and I would be pressing every single button, getting every single dealer competing with one another.

The new boat business, similar things. The new RV business. These businesses have collapsed. And think about the situation that most of these dealers are in. The dealer, what does he have? He has what's called a floor plan. And so most dealers buy huge amounts of inventory on credit, on short-term financing called a floor plan.

And they'll put out huge amounts of money and sign up for huge amounts of debt to maintain what's on their lot. They have to move cars in order to make that system work. Now, there are different levels of conservatism that the dealers are operating under, but they have to move cars.

What has happened is the shock over the last month has been so severe that the number of cars that they've been able to move has just utterly collapsed. And those dealers are starting to feel massive levels of pressure. They need to move vehicles, and they need to move vehicles to service their payments.

They can cut staff, they can cut positions, that lowers their outflow. They can reduce their payroll down to even just a minimum staff. What they can't cut without getting rid of the inventory is their monthly payments. And so they need cash flow. And so right now, if you've been sitting and watching and waiting and said, "You know what, I'd like to have this certain new car, "I'd like to have this certain new boat, or this RV." This is the time to be negotiating.

And what I'll tell you is especially focus on doing that negotiating across the country, or even across the world. Go wherever you need to. And hey, if you're sitting at home anyway, they're used to working with you virtually. They're not expecting you to show up. And so this is the time to work the phones, this is the time to work the email.

Look for opportunities. Now, I'm not sure yet that the new house market, that the builders are feeling the pressure. I haven't been able to get a good firm grasp on that. But if you're interested in building a new house or buying a new house, I would definitely be investigating it right now.

Now, what about the used market? I don't know that we're seeing a lot of deals in the used market yet, because I think the job markets or that people are losing their jobs, it's so new. And I don't see a lot of people panic selling anything. Now, maybe if you're shopping for something specific, of course, when I say the used market, what does that mean?

Does that mean the used market in Roomba vacuum cleaners? Does that mean the used market in hoverboards? The used market in jet skis or private airplanes? What are we talking about? Every one of those is very different. But whatever markets you're interested in, whatever toys you've been looking to acquire, I would be shopping them right now and seeing what those deals are.

Because I think that if they're not there now, they're just gonna start to be there pretty quickly. So get into your, well, if your local pawn shop is open. When your local pawn shop opens, get in there. For now, be on Craigslist, be on OfferUp, be on Facebook, be on, what do the Canadians say, Kijiji, right?

Kijiji, I can't remember if it's the, I think it's Kijiji. Whatever your local platform is, be on those platforms and start looking around and seeing. Because there will come a time when people need to start liquidating stuff. And so start getting a sense of how long the auctions are out there.

That's the key to buying well in any used market period is to know the market so that you can understand where you are in the market. So you can understand when you have the chance to press somebody, when you say, eh, well, I'll come back in two months and then I'll talk to you.

So you need to know the speed, the days on market for the markets that you're involved in. So get started shopping. You're sitting at home, get started shopping. What are the things that would make your life, your family's lifestyle better? You know, it's interesting. Questions are asked of me.

Joshua, why do you think that you should have cash? One of the reasons I think you should have cash is usually just for opportunities. If you, it'll be very hard for you without a huge income to be able to live well now and also be financially free unless you get good at buying cheap stuff for a great lifestyle.

The typical, you should see some air quotes, the typical high consumption lifestyle is insanely expensive. It's very inefficient. Let's say that you have a dual income household, both income earners work jobs. That is the single most inefficient possible way that you can set up your lifestyle. You are absurdly highly taxed in that situation, both income earners.

So yes, you have good household income, but you pay a brutally high level of taxes. You have no efficiencies in your personal life. And so you often pay very high retail prices for stuff. You don't have time or energy to make a lunch or to cook from scratch. So you go out to eat all the time, right?

That's just the tip of the iceberg. You don't have time to school your kids or hire a private tutor in your home. And so you put them in expensive retail private schools. You don't have time to research and travel off season. And so you've got to travel on the same schedule as everyone else.

So you pay high prices for airfares, high prices for hotels. About the only savings that you could do there, I guess, is do some credit card hacking, if that's your thing. You don't have time or inclination 'cause you're not that class of person to go and shop on the used market.

So you go and buy brand new RV and keep it for a few years and sell it and destroy your money. You lease cars, you buy new boats. All these things just destroy your money at every single level. And about the only thing you come out the other side with is a 401k along the way.

Now, can you do it smart? Can you avoid that? Yeah, of course you can. Anybody along the way can start doing smart stuff. Just 'cause you work a job doesn't mean that you have to go buy brand new RVs. Just 'cause you work a job doesn't mean you can't do credit card hacking.

Of course, that's silly. It's not either or, that would be a false dichotomy. But there are a lot of people who are stuck in that world and because of it, they never get ahead. Now, if you go into the world of the conservers, right? The savers, you'll often find that they buy really fancy stuff, but the total lifetime cost of their stuff is less.

So let's say you want a boat. Well, don't go to the boat dealership and buy a name brand boat. Buy the boat with cash from the guy next door who's about to have the thing repossessed. And he just needs to get rid of it. Buy the RV from the distressed seller who's about to lose it.

Pick up the car off lease. But in order to do those things, you need money, which means you'll have to save in advance. And so whether cash just simply means going and writing a check or whether it means $100 bills on the hood of a car, you would be shocked at the deals you can find when you're ready to move fast and ready to buy stuff.

So this is the time to buy toys. Think ahead, buy the toys that your family's gonna benefit from if you wanna have toys in your life. If you can cut the total cost of ownership on toys based upon getting good deals, you can live a much richer lifestyle at a lower cost.

And it is entirely possible for an intelligent, thoughtful buyer to make money on almost every single toy they have in their life. It's a skill set. I haven't been perfect at it, but I've been pretty good. And I've always inspired by people who can make money on seemingly everything in their life.

So consider. Next, use this time of stress and crisis to renegotiate your obligations. Renegotiate your bills, your expenses. Now those can be the big ones, those can be the little ones. If you haven't picked up the phone and called your landlord, I would strongly encourage you to do that.

Pick up the phone, call your landlord, renegotiate your rent, renegotiate your lease. Ask for a discount. One of those major skills to develop if you wanna really be wealthy is the skill of asking for a discount. Consistently, every single time, may I have a discount? If you don't ask, you probably won't get one, but if you do ask, you sometimes get one.

So call your landlord and ask for a discount. It's very much within your landlord's best interest if you're a good tenant to have you. So go ahead and ask for a discount. Now you can leverage opportunities in your life right now. You can leverage the fact that you're worried about your job.

You can leverage the fact that your hours are cut. You can leverage the fact that your wife got laid off. You can leverage the fact that your business is struggling. Don't lie. But you can leverage those things. And just say, hey, listen, my wife got laid off or my hours got cut at work.

I can still pay you and I do that, but I'm concerned. Would you be willing to discount my rent, at least temporarily, until we see if we can get through this thing? That's a much better scenario than you're not paying at all. So see, can you renegotiate your rent?

Can you renegotiate your leases? Now clearly, those in the commercial marketplace are much more accustomed to this, but use it as an opportunity to renegotiate your leases. Use it as an opportunity to renegotiate your mortgage. Consider refinancing your mortgage. Change the terms in some way that benefits you. Stretch out the payments, lower the cost, lower your cash flow.

Renegotiate things right now. Even your other bills. Many bills, many service providers are offering relief right now. Everything from relief on your student loans to no early term payments. No early termination fees for a contract. Those kinds of things. So go through and renegotiate all your bills and your expenses.

Standard practice with things like an internet company or a cable company is, in order to get, because of the way they are so dumb, they treat good customers like dirt and treat new customers like gold. One of the best things that you should do is make a list of that once a year.

Call your cable company and tell them you're gonna cancel and get the cancellation department to see if they can offer you a new package to keep your service going. Now that's a strategy in difficult times and in non-difficult times, but there's no reason not to use it right now.

Renegotiate everything. If you've got a $180 a month cell phone bill, then say, "Listen, man, I'm gonna go to Mint Mobile "if you don't lower this thing. "What can you do?" And see what they can offer you. You don't know if you don't ask. So renegotiate everything. Consider what you could have done if you had known in advance that this was coming.

Consider how flexible you would have wanted to be if you had known in advance that this was coming. Sometimes you're not gonna get out of the deal right now. You're not gonna get out of the contract. You're not gonna get out of the lease. You're not gonna be able to renegotiate it.

But if you learn from this, next time you'll make a better deal. So I think a good, you know, I start disaster planning in my How to Survive and Thrive During the Coming Economic Crisis course. I talk about starting with bankruptcy. That's your starting point. Let's do bankruptcy planning.

Let's say that you knew that you were gonna be forced into bankruptcy. What would you need to come flying out the other side of the bankruptcy ready to rebuild? So you start there. That affects the types of contracts you make. That affects the where you keep your money, how you keep your money, the forms that you keep your money, et cetera.

And then once you start with bankruptcy, then you could just a matter of going up from there. Let's give you a simple example, right? Business loans versus personal loans. It's never made sense to me why individuals go and, you know, borrow money in their personal name to start a business when they could borrow money in the business name or in the very least segregate those business debts out onto a separate credit card.

That's kind of 101. So assume you start with bankruptcy and say, how do I protect myself coming out of bankruptcy? And then begin with that plan in mind. So similar things, don't sign up for balloon payments, right, things that could bankrupt you. Don't sign up for personal guarantees whenever you have the choice to avoid it.

Don't sign up even for long-term commitments or long-term contracts when you have the choice to admit it. That way of thinking, sorry, when you have the choice to avoid it, that way of thinking will help you. The entry-level consumer option is don't sign up for a cell phone contract.

Use a prepaid plan. That way you can just drop your cell phone service off at the touch of a hat. I've found that to be so helpful. I fear I make too much out of a small thing, but for a lot of people, especially a lot of young entry-level workers, their single biggest bill is their cell phone.

And this turns into just a crazy bill where you have a phone payment, so you're making payments on a device that was expensive, and then you have a service payment that you're often locked into with a contract with a big hairy early termination fee. Well, what happens if you get laid off?

You lose the phone, you lose the service, you harm your credit sometimes, and now you don't have a phone which is gonna be one of your most valuable communication tools. Now I believe that that phone is probably one of the first things that you should buy. If I were flat broke, completely broke, I would probably, I would skip meals until I could get a functional phone because that communication device opens up a world to you.

It's hard to get a job if you don't have a stable phone number. But that doesn't mean that you have to be locked in. Over the years, what I've done is I've moved everybody away from phone calls over to messaging apps. This is kind of a funny thing, just a little bit of cultural insight into the United States versus much of the rest of the world.

The United States functions on phones and phone systems. Most of the world functions on apps, primarily WhatsApp. And there's an interesting anthropological reason for this. If you go back, and this is my analysis, I've never read this anywhere, it's just my opinion. Feel free to disprove it if you want, but this is just Joshua observing the marketplace and thinking about why this exists.

But in the United States, you had an early adoption of telephone infrastructure. You had the invention of the telephone, then the widespread installation of it. And so the US American economy spent millions, billions probably of dollars, connecting everybody with a phone line. But that phone infrastructure was specifically wired phone infrastructure.

And everybody got used to using their home phones. So back in the early days of cell phones, when I was in high school, in the late '90s and the early 2000s, you would call somebody on their cell phone, but it was considered very bad taste to call somebody for a long conversation.

You would call them if necessary, but you always moved to a home phone because the home phones were a lot cheaper. Even the home phones, though, were expensive. I love reading old books on saving money, and I'll always chuckle when you read somebody talk about saving money because if you can buy a first-class stamp and send somebody a letter in the mail using a first-class stamp, it was cheaper than making a long-distance phone call.

It just seems so antiquated now, but it was the real advice back then. That was the personal finance advice that made a difference. Well, in much of the world, that wired infrastructure was never installed, but there was an immediate leap to wireless. And this has made a huge difference in many markets.

Many wide parts of Africa and some of Southeast Asia, some of the Americas, they just completely skipped all the cost and expense of installing this massive wired infrastructure, and they went straight to cell phones, which was awesome for their ability to quickly get connected. Really helped out many of the local people to gain access to the world of information.

But because of that, they started with cell phones. So Americans always have needed this interplay between cell phones and wired phone connections, but most other individuals had cell phones. And then very quickly, once data, once the smartphone came out, and then once data became more widely available, they realized, due to the need to conserve money and conserve costs, they realized that data was more efficient than voice communication, than text.

This was back in the days when you would pay 10 cents per text message, et cetera. Data was a lot more efficient. And so apps, communication apps, like WhatsApp, came to prominence very, very quickly, and everybody moved to that, and that became the standard system. And so to this day, outside of the United States and outside of Western Europe, you'll often see that a business will put its WhatsApp number on the door of its store, and that's considered normal to ask somebody.

People answer their WhatsApp number even if they don't recognize the number. They respond to the messages. And so what that means, though, is because WhatsApp is a service where you're not charged for the use of it, and because it only connects to data, then people have a much thinner relationship with their cell phone provider, 'cause they're not tied necessarily to one number.

You can have a WhatsApp phone issued in one specific number, and you can keep that number for years even if you don't keep that number alive. And so a little bit of an aside there. Hope you enjoyed kind of the insight into the development of it. You can understand, though, the anthropology of this movement.

And what you can see is in the United States, if you can move away from the phone number, then you have the opportunity to lower those expenses. And so you can cut out a very significant cost for young people. Now, if I'm running a business, not a chance in the world I'm gonna try to make do with kind of cobbled together phone systems and cheap stuff.

Man, give me good service, give me stability, et cetera. I'm not gonna try to run a business from pseudo app. Not gonna work. But for somebody who's an entry-level worker, not earning a lot of money, the ability to keep communications but cut $150 out of their phone bill is a huge deal.

But that exact same principle applies at a different scale. At a much higher scale, it's a matter of negotiating your leases and thinking, what if I had to cut this lease out right away? How would I do it? It's a matter of negotiating your employment contracts and saying, what's the total cost?

How can I shorten this up so that we can be more nimble? It's a matter of thinking about your infrastructure and how you design your business. And that's too complex for me to give example after example, but it's the same level of thinking, just applied at a different scale with a different number of zeros behind.

Think through what you'd like to do. For me, over the years, when I thought about that stuff, I realized that I was nervous. I didn't, kind of allergic to the idea of being in a situation where I have a lot of long-term contracts. The thing I didn't like about debt was I wasn't able to pivot quickly.

And so if I avoid it, then I can still pivot quickly. The same thing applies to long-term leases, long-term commitments, contracts, et cetera. I'd personally rather pay a little bit more in order to have the flexibility of canceling early rather than be committed for the long-term. Your mileage may vary.

Close with this. Think through this current disaster and think about what you'd like to have if this were really bad. I think we're gonna avoid the worst case scenario. My best guess at the moment is I think the medical issues are demonstrating themselves that they can be brought under control.

And at the moment, we don't know what the economic impacts are gonna be, but we're probably gonna avoid kind of the long-term worst case scenario. It's still hard to know. Another few weeks, we're gonna tell the story, but I'm getting the distinct impression that people are less scared of the virus than they were previously and that they're pretty much done with being shut down.

And so I think that, although I don't know what that solution is gonna be, I think it's probably gonna be widespread testing, antibody testing, and active infection testing. I think that's probably gonna be the solution with more isolation for the at-risk. That just seems like the most sensible solution and everybody else try to get back to work.

If that happens, I think this could be more of a more normal run-of-the-mill deep hard recession rather than just global catastrophe. I'm still hoping, maybe it's just wishful thinking, but I'm still hoping that we avoid the global catastrophe scenario. But I've been taking notes because I could still see that global catastrophe scenario happening.

And it's remarkable to me how fast it happened. And so I've been taking notes. All right, what would I need if this were really bad? How do I feel right now? You know, what am I learning from the situation? I was chatting with somebody recently, said, you know, the $100,000 emergency fund is gonna be the status symbol of choice for the next generation.

When all of a sudden you realize that we can go from practically zero, not actually zero, but very low unemployment numbers, a few percent, you know, practically 0% unemployment, up to 30% unemployment overnight in a few weeks, I never imagined that was possible. I never imagined that. But I'm gonna imagine it going forward.

All of a sudden now a three-month emergency fund or a six-month emergency fund just doesn't seem so robust. I used to recommend it 'cause that was the CFP accepted standard, three-month emergency fund for dual income earners or six months for single income earners. Well, I've not been quite comfortable with that for a while, but I mean, with the number of children I got, three months just doesn't seem all that robust anymore.

Maybe it's different for you. So maybe you say, you know, my target is now a 12-month emergency fund. I sleep better at night. I don't worry, I don't have anxiety. I have processed this event far differently than many other people have because I don't have any anxiety about the financial ramifications of it.

I'm well-prepared for it. Again, not bragging, just trying to say that the decisions that you make today are gonna make a big difference in how you experience the next crisis. And there's always going to be a next crisis. And so that sense of peace, that sense of robustness in my business and my personal finances allows me to be at total peace and to focus on how am I gonna turn this thing out?

How am I gonna serve millions of people? How am I gonna win? And those are pretty cool. I think you should take seriously the lessons that you're learning from your investment portfolio. I'll admit something that is not particularly popular, but it's something I've experienced. I've learned that I haven't been sad to not own mass market stock mutual funds.

I haven't missed it, which was a strange revelation for me because I used to make a business out of training investors not to bail when times are bad. I was never scared of volatility. And my entire business as an investment manager was predicated upon the value proposition of helping people stay invested when everything within them is screaming, sell, sell, sell, sell.

But I haven't been out of that business for six years now, or six years. I haven't owned stock mutual funds in probably four years, I guess, three or four years. And it's been fascinating to just sit back with a kind of detached perspective. And honestly, I've had to reassess.

I'm like, why put up with that stuff? Like, why put up? Everyone says, and if I were Nick Murray, I'm not subscribed to Nick Murray's newsletter right now, but I used to subscribe to his newsletter. Right now, Nick Murray is guaranteed writing articles about how strong the American companies are on a global basis where they have this global income stream, et cetera.

And is it true? It's absolutely true. But are these companies so fragile that they couldn't make it through a few weeks? Right, is Delta Airlines so poorly managed that they couldn't make it through three weeks with a shutdown? Now, I concede that an 80% decrease in traffic is a big, big decrease, and it's very hard to prepare for that.

But when you have year after years after years after years of making profit, like don't any of them set aside any money? Don't any of them save money? I think the millennial complaint is exactly right. You know, everyone says, well, buy a little bit less avocado toast, and all of a sudden you'd be able to save some money.

Well, maybe if you save a little bit of money, companies, you wouldn't need such a fast bailout. What a crazy system. Now, I'm happy to accept that your rationality of the markets, I'm happy to accept the unknowns. Like, it's fine. I think there's opportunities, and I'm not, I think there are opportunities to profit long-term.

I haven't missed the volatility. That's all I'm saying, just sharing my personal experience. I haven't missed it. Because it's such an opaque market to individuals that you can see the trades sometimes, but it just seems to me almost infinitely easier to run your own business, to be involved in your own scenario, where the market trends are more understandable to you.

I realized that, you know, I wish I had more gold. One of, you know, it's the untalked about scenario, and I own more gold than the average person, certainly, but one of the things I realized, like, I wish I owned more gold. It feels good in times of crisis to have assets that are not so determined by, you know, this crazy scenario.

It feels good to have assets that can move easily around. So, you know what? I always felt crazy for buying gold, but I wish I had more gold. There's an interesting investment argument, and there's just something about it. Is it illogical? I think it is sometimes. I think people have this illogical connection to it, but is it real?

It's no less real than anything else. You know, I've talked to a number of people every now and then, 'cause I talk publicly about owning gold. I talk sometimes to portfolio managers and whatnot, and we talk about gold investing, and often I'll get people to invest, to admit to me privately every now and then.

So I'm like, you know, I bought my first gold coin, and I sat there, and I held the thing, and you know what? I realized I like this. I don't wanna sell it. It feels good. And I never got that responsibility, that same emotion from owning a share of a company as I got from owning that physical coin, that one ounce gold coin.

Now, again, the logical side of my brain says, all right, Joshua, red alert, logical fallacy coming right up. Pay attention. This is probably not something that you should invest based upon emotions and feelings, but it's really true. Those emotions and feelings matter. And over the years, one of the ways that I've matured as a financial planner is I've come to take those emotions and feelings very seriously.

I used to tell people, oh, you shouldn't pay attention to your emotions. You should educate yourself into a more enlightened position. And then I started to have clients have bad experiences, and to these days, I've learned, like, dealing with the emotions is one of the first things to think about.

So just evaluate what you wish you'd do. I have more stuff on my list than that. In fact, I got a big list of things where I'm like, you know what, I'd really like to have that right now. I won't go into that detail here, maybe another time, but for now, those things are things I wanna keep private.

But just evaluate, what do you wish you had right now? What do you wish you needed? If you've got a toilet paper shortage in your house, do you wish you had toilet paper? If so, pretty soon, it'll be easy for you to stock up. Right now, you can buy all the commercial paper you want.

Just go get commercial rolls of toilet paper so at least you have the stuff. But then in the future, just figure out how much toilet paper you always wanna have on hand, and then make sure you never go below that in your margin of toilet paper. If it's a month, great, have a few packages.

If it's three months, whatever you use, just do that. Do you not feel stupid for the fact that you're a millionaire, and yet you can't lay your hands on toilet paper right now? Forgive my harsh language, but that's the lesson to grasp from it. Do you not feel short-sighted for the fact that I've got thousands of dollars, I've got thousands of dollars, but I can't get toilet paper?

This thing that I use every single day, do you not feel short-sighted for the fact that you're a thousandaire, or a 10,000aire, or a 100,000aire, or a millionaire, and you can't lay your hands on that? Which makes a bigger difference in your quality of life? The fact that you have an extra $523 in your 401(k) because you put your 401(k) before everything?

Or the fact that your wife has plenty of toilet paper? If you feel exposed from the fact that you're a wealthy person, but you can't get your hands on toilet paper right now, you should feel exposed, and you should fix that. But I think also what's interesting is right now, I think evaluate where you live, right?

Evaluate your neighbors, your neighborhood, your house, et cetera. Evaluate who you live with, what that environment is like. I hope you don't wind coming out of this crisis where you're stuck at home. I hope you don't come out hating your kids, hating your wife, and I hope you don't wind up in divorce court after this.

People make jokes about it, but I think it's really sad. I hope you really like the people that you like, but I'll tell you this, if you don't like your children, whose responsibility is that? If you don't like your children, why do you expect anybody else to like your children?

Heard a parenting quote a number of years ago. I don't know if it's true or not, but it had a ring of truth to it. It was expressing something I think that's important. You should train and discipline your children until you like them. So if you find that you're spending hours and hours and hours a day with your children, and all of a sudden you don't like them anymore, that better be your goal, is to say, how can I change my practices as a father, as a mother, so that I like my children, so that I want to spend my time with them?

Why is it that they become these creatures that I don't wanna be around? That is not normal. (silence) If that's been your experience, I urge you, examine the fact that that is not normal, and it's your responsibility to change that. What about your relationship with your wife, with your husband?

If you don't like being at home and spending time with them now, why do you think you're gonna like being at home and spending time with them when you start your own business when you retire? If you don't like being with them in your house, are you really gonna like traveling the world with them when you're old and rich and retired?

Now, I would recommend you not trade them in for a newer model. I don't think that's a good plan. I think the better plan is, fall in love with them all over again, and help them fall in love with you all over again. (silence) Is it easy? No, it's not easy.

But is it worth it? I think it really is. You can build a relationship into anything that you want. That's your responsibility. So can the stress exacerbate things? It can. I'm not immune to that stress. Neither are you. We're all subject to it. And I'm not trying to be excessively idealistic.

But there's a difference between the general tone of your life being disaster, interspersed with a few moments of fun and joy, versus the general tone of your life being fun and joy, and good, interspersed with a few moments of disaster. (silence) You can change those things faster than you can change almost anything else.

You really can. So consider what you can do in your situation to improve your family. It would be a real disaster for you to get old and rich 'cause you saved money and worked all the time, and then not to know your children, not to know your wife. Evaluate where you live.

One of the things that's so fascinating about this particular crisis is the difference in how people are experiencing it based upon their different lifestyles. If you have gotten locked in and quarantined in a little tiny apartment in Wuhan, China, where they welded the doors of your apartment building shut, you had one experience.

If you got quarantined in a cute little villa out in the Italian countryside, you got another experience. If you got quarantined in downtown New York City, you've had a third experience. If you got quarantined on your 160 acre farm in the rolling hills of Virginia, you've had a very different experience.

Consider what that would mean to you. Again, just sharing from good things, for us, our quarantine has been great. I was telling my wife just this morning how thankful I am not to be living in an RV right now 'cause that would be really tough to be quarantined in an RV.

There are travelers all around the world stranded right now. People can't get to their boats. They can't get out of the, they're locked in RV campground. They can't move, they can't drive. It's tough. And I think there's time for that. We can't always predict when disasters occur, but in general, your lifestyle is gonna be set up and it can be made better or worse.

You know, we live in a great house. I got a great yard. And so for us, we've hardly noticed it because we're kind of homebodies anyway. It's just the quarantine for us has been a slightly smaller social sphere than it otherwise was. Now, is that better or worse? No, just saying that it's been much more comfortable than other places.

And so one of the things that would be a big deal for me is if I ever needed to move into the city, I need to live in a small apartment in the city, given this experience, I would never want to be locked down in the city. That's always been important to me.

If I lived in a city, I gotta have a way to get out of the city. The city can be a place of tremendous resources. You're unlikely to starve in the city because they're gonna send all kinds of food there. The grocery stores are gonna be stocked in the city before they are in the country.

But then there can become a stressing point where the city is not such a wonderful place to be. Clearly, the city is not such a healthy place to be in some circumstances. And so, you know, that 160 acre farm in Virginia or that half acre lot somewhere with a nice RV on it, with a yard the kids can play on, it's all of a sudden looking a little bit better versus being stranded in your 37th floor apartment.

Consider if there's an option there. I've been fascinating to watch how different states, both states within these United States and also states as in governments around the world have dealt with the lockdowns and the quarantines, et cetera. Man, living in a police state is not fun. It's shocking. I would not have predicted some of the civil liberties that people would give up, especially in the United States, again, where I have the most experience.

I never believed that the Americans would sit down and let themselves be arrested for paddle boarding and why they would put up with that. I thought better of the Americans. But man, there's a big difference in how these things are done from state to state. So pay attention. And then just simply, you know, how do you assess the safety of the place that you live?

You have a community that you like being a part of. Just assess those things. And if there are any changes, think about making them. In closing, times of difficulty are times of opportunity. Sometimes you win and sometimes you learn. It's possible that you are not in a position to profit from this current event.

It's possible that this is going to devastate you financially. There's no reason for us to be unrealistic in our thinking. There are millions and millions of families in the United States of America who are heading into bankruptcy in the coming years because of this. Businesses heading into bankruptcy. People fighting right now to see if they can avoid that outcome.

There are hundreds of millions of people around the world wondering where their food is gonna come from next week. (birds chirping) What we're living in right now is wreaking devastation across the globe. It's hurting people. Is the economic hurt, the economic uncertainty better than the physical hurt and the risk of the virus?

I don't know. And it doesn't matter if I know or not. I'm not in any position to do anything other than set my family aside. And I think all of us just have to take care of our own affairs. I don't know if I'm gonna be able to do that.

I don't know if it's better or worse. I don't see why I have to make a judgment on that. What I would say is that millions and hundreds of millions of people right now are hurting and scared. And they're not gonna be sitting aside ready to invest in, you know, make a fortune or buy a boat.

If that's you, resolve to learn from the pain. Resolve to say, I'm going to go through this pain and it's going to be bad, but I am going to learn how to never again be here in my life. Once I get out of this, I am never again going to be here in my life.

And so if that's the way that you win from this current disaster, that's good. Start there. You'll have a chance to do things differently. I was struck this morning. I watched a, I was looking at a news article and I was, it's from the Daily Mail. And the headline, it says, "Stark photos show miles long row of cars waiting outside a Florida food bank as demand surges by 600% and more than half a million residents file for unemployment." And so there's pictures, drone pictures of the cars.

And what's fascinating to me is to see how fancy the cars out are. Now this is a South Florida phenomenon where especially Miamians, like Miami people will live in a roach infested single wide trailer while driving a $100,000 car. They will starve so that they can drive their car because it is the status symbol.

But it's hard to find a broken down cheap car in this. And what I think about this, certainly there's a component of which you say, should you make a better decision? But there's not a shame in seeking help if you need help. Right, that's why food banks exist, which is why those of us who have the means, we need to donate to those, to a food bank.

Whether it's a food bank organization, they need money, they need food. And so let's support those to help people in need. And if you need help, go and seek it out. But there is clearly a crazy prioritization here where somebody is out of food or feels that they need food in potentially less than a month after a disaster.

That is, I don't wanna say text, the textbook definition of insanity, it's certainly not, but it's crazy. It's crazy. If you look at the cars in this line, not all of them, some of them are basic entry-level transportation, few thousand dollar cars. But there are many 40, 50, $60,000 cars sitting in this line that I can clearly identify from the drone photos.

That's a big deal. The fact that somebody with a new car, here's a Mercedes SUV, being loaded with donated food in the back of it. That should be a shocking picture of a complete and total misunderstanding of the proper priorities of life. Don't resolve that that is never you.

Resolve that that is never you going to a food bank after potentially a month of unemployment to pick up donated food driving in your expensive Mercedes SUV. Resolve that that's not you. Have some self-pride and some self-worth and some foresight to make sure that's not you. So if all you gain from this is a chance to learn, okay, learn.

Learn as to how you can improve for next time. Learn so that you're not here again. But if you do have some resources and you've been waiting for this time, get busy looking for opportunities. Get busy looking for that new job, that new career. Get busy seeing, can I take a little bit of training and qualify myself for something new?

Get busy focusing in on, hey, how are my competitors doing? Can I buy my competitors out? I coach a number of entrepreneurs. The lesson right now is, have you touched base with your competitors? 'Cause right now is the chance to be talking to them and saying, hey, listen, I'm ready to, do you want to sell?

Let's get some discounts on buying some new businesses and expanding our operations. On buying the equipment at the bankruptcy sale from the businesses going out of sale. See, bankruptcy is incredibly important in a marketplace. It's incredibly important because it provides an opportunity for old businesses to get washed out and for them to be replaced with newer businesses.

And that happens very effectively at a bankruptcy auction when a new business can come in and buy the equipment and such for businesses going out. It gets rid of all the dead weight, all of the broken promises and such and provides new opportunities to the new competitors the chance to come in.

So look around and see, is there a way that I can profit from this? Be positioned to win. And I think there'll be some opportunities for you. Thank you for listening to today's show. Hope this has been helpful for you. I hope, I want you to come away from this show with a sense of hope and a sense of optimism.

And I want you to look for the opportunities in your life. I've tried over the years to focus on preparing for disaster, preparing for financial disaster, societal disaster, whatever disaster means. Because if you're prepared, if you've at least thought through it, then you're positioned to win on the other side of it.

So hopefully you've done your preparations. If you haven't, learn the lessons. But now that you've done those preparations, disaster is here. And now it's time to start looking for opportunity. There are many, many ways that you can profit from this opportunity. So get busy looking for them. Be creative.

Constraints force upon you creativity. They provide you new opportunities. Reorganize your business. Tackle a new market. Look creatively for anything that you can do to improve your circumstances and situation. If you start looking for things, it's been my experience that you generally find them. Pretty much find what you go out looking for in the world.

Hope that's helpful for you. Thank you for listening. I would encourage you, if you have not joined the Radical Personal Finance Patreon page, do that. Come on by patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance. Join up there, you know, a few bucks a month. Super helpful to me, helps me to keep going. And try to offer a lot of access there.

Just did an Ask Me Anything on Friday where I had a good chat with a bunch of patrons there. So go to radicalpersonalfinance, sorry, go to patreon.com/radicalpersonalfinance. Sign up to support the show there. I would greatly appreciate your support there on that platform. Thank you very much, and I'll be back with you soon.

- The holidays start here at Ralph's with a variety of options to celebrate traditions old and new. You could do a classic herb roasted turkey or spice it up and make turkey tacos. Serve up a go-to shrimp cocktail or use simple truth wild caught shrimp for your first Cajun risotto.

Make creamy mac and cheese or a spinach artichoke fondue from our selection of Murray's cheese. No matter how you shop, Ralph's has all the freshest ingredients to embrace all your holiday traditions. Ralph's, fresh for everyone.