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. Just about a five-minute update for you, four quick points, and a couple of closing remarks to hopefully encourage you.

I want you to know that I'm here and I am working with you through this time. I know it's been a very difficult time. We've gotten note after note and email after email of many of you just facing new changes as we all are. Many people laid off, losing their jobs, businesses being impacted.

I just want you to know I care about it. I care about you. It's been a very tiring last few days, very wearing. I'm one of those emotional people that kind of emotes with, it sounds like a stupid word, emotes with people, but I feel your pain and I'm working with you.

I've been mostly busy the last few days just working with a lot of consulting clients, trying to work through some problems. We've done everything from people doing well, how to capitalize on this, to people heading into bankruptcy and how do we protect against that. It's been quite the interesting experience and I'm so grateful to do that because one of the things I've realized, I've done a lot of consulting this year ever since I got my life stationary and it's really helped me a ton to just have better insight into what works and what doesn't.

I'll be bringing some of those lessons to you as soon as I can. If you are in need of personal consultation, that's where most of my time is going this week and next week, email me joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com. I'd be happy to work with you. I'm currently running a March Madness sale that's still on until the end of March.

March Madness, so I'm discounting my consulting fees from $400 an hour to $250 an hour. I have yet to have an unsatisfied client even though we've had clients from every different stage of finances. If you'd like to talk about your specific situation, send me an email joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com. I've also been updating courses this week.

I had a couple of several update calls with some of my courses for my students of how to survive and thrive during the coming economic crisis. We had a live update on Monday where we talked in detail about, I shared what I'm doing to protect my money from additionally, you know, crises that are getting additionally more and more dangerous.

We talked about what's working, what's not, answered a lot of questions about this current crisis. If you'd like access to that, then of course go to radicalpersonalfinance.com/store and join that course. 20% off coupon code for all of my courses right now using coupon code coronavirus. So go to radicalpersonalfinance.com/store and enter coronavirus if you'd like to try that course out.

Also, I'm going to be finishing up this next week my course on radical preparedness. I got behind because the world started falling apart, but if you'd like that, it's not in the store right now because it's kind of a beta version, super cheap but a beta version. Go to radicalpreparedness.com and you can sign up there for that one.

That one's very practical, kind of the nuts and bolts of practical family preparedness. If you are having financial trouble right now, businesses struggling, etc., I want you to count your blessings because frankly this is the best time to go broke. Sounds terrible, I know, but it's true that it's really frustrating and difficult to go broke when it's just you, but you know, when it's just you.

You don't get a lot of mercy from the mortgage company when you can't pay your mortgage if you're the only one that can't pay your mortgage. You don't get a lot of leniency from your landlord about paying your rent when it's just you who's going broke at one time.

You're out on the street pretty quickly. Best time to go broke is probably when everyone else is going broke as well. So if you can't pay your mortgage payment, you can't pay your rent payment, then be thankful that everyone else is in the same picture right now and fight.

I don't have the time right now to finish the show, but I think the next show I'll be doing is going to be basically how to fight in the middle of this. So if you lost your job, stay tuned, keep an eye on your podcast feed and I'll release that episode soon.

How to cut your finances quickly, how to be thoughtful, how to prioritize, how to deal with the emotion of it and just do kind of a cold logical analysis and how to do it. But at this point in time, everybody's in the same boat. Not everybody, many people are in the same boat with you.

I have been encouraged though. Not everybody's going broke and that's really great because one of the things that you see right now is you see how good preparations really make the difference. Good financial preparations really make the difference. Having been prudent, those who've been prudent and have been careful are in good shape.

And those who've thought carefully about their lifestyle and been prudent in advance are in good shape. And so at this point, still working to figure out the opportunities in investment markets, watching things carefully, not going to make any public comment here other than simply this. Stick to your plan.

Consider what your goals are. Always start with goals. Investments should simply fund goals. That's it. Investments should fund goals. So start with goals. Once your goals are clear, the path to an investment plan is also going to be clear. So start with your goals. Then consider the various paths that you can use to achieve those goals.

And consider the various investment outcomes, the various investment paths. But start with your goals. From there, make an investment plan and then implement it steadily. This time of turmoil that we're in is going to be the foundation of many, many fortunes. Now some of those fortunes are going to be based on people who had money on the side, who had capital to just simply put in.

I've been waiting years for this recession and so I'm not excited about it because it comes with a huge amount of pain for people, which I don't like. But I am excited about it with the investment markets. And so if you've been sitting with cash on the side or you've got cash on the side, this is and is going to be a golden time.

A lot of the timing of this depends on your goals and what exactly you're trying to do so that you can time it as best as you're able to. On the other hand, if you don't have a lot of money, this can still be an opportunity because often times like this completely change the marketplace.

They completely show who is exposed and they create opportunities for those who are hustlers, those who are able to get in and be strategic and think, which is why you need to move so quickly. So these are times of certainly great loss, but when there's change in the marketplace that creates opportunity and I want you to be able to take advantage of that opportunity.

Finally I've just been reflecting on truly how great life is and I do that a lot, especially during difficult times. Just try to count my blessings sounds trite, but it's really true. And a lot of reasons for that and I had some sick children the last few days as well and not coronavirus, just kind of standard sickness and some sick children, sick dogs for some reason.

Watching at work quarantine in case it is something else, but I don't think it is. But just you reflect on it and with so much death around, you just reflect on how grateful you are to be alive and to be able to talk to those you love. Right now in Spain, they're piling bodies in ice rinks.

I think the USA is probably a week behind Spain. This coming next few days are going to be huge in the bad way, massive. I continue to hope for the development of new therapies. The hydroxychloroquine stuff mixed with the Z-Pak, that stuff looks increasingly promising, but still no clear definitive answer right now.

But pick up the phone and call someone you love and talk with them. Again, right now in Spain, they don't have any place to put the bodies. They're piling them in ice rinks. And as this thing continues, we're back on doing mass graves. And it's certainly devastating to the loss of life.

So it just feels sometimes I sit down and I think, "Okay, I'm going to record a show on money." Obviously money is important, but sometimes I just feel like I can't talk about money because in light of the weightier things, in light of eternity, in light of people's families and lives, it just kind of feels hollow to talk about money sometimes.

But to do with that, I want to close with a quote. I was reading, I found this quote. It was also in that book that I read the other day and I went and looked it up and then I got the book that it comes from. But this quote that I'm about to read comes from a book written by Sterling Hayden.

The book is called Wanderer. It's kind of a classic evidently in the sailing community. I haven't read the book yet. I just found the quote and I went ahead and bought the book. But evidently Sterling Hayden, I didn't know much about him, but he had quite the life. And it's one of those stories of people going from the heights of society to taking a different – a very different scenario.

Sterling Hayden was a movie star and at some point in time he – I'll just read the overview. It says from this book on Amazon. It says, "Sterling Hayden was at the peak of his earning power as a star when he suddenly quit. He walked out on Hollywood, walked out of a shattered marriage, defied the courts and broke and an outlaw set sail with his four children in the schooner Wanderer bound for the South Seas." And it just kind of shares his overall story.

And so there's this quote that I found and I just thought it was interesting because it expresses a truth that sometimes people who live very broken lives can often express truths that some of us are simply too scared to acknowledge. You think about the – what's his name? The dude that went and lived in the bus up in Alaska and died up there, the blue bus guy, I can't remember the name.

But here was Sterling Hayden's quote. It says, "To be truly challenging, a voyage like a life must rest on a firm foundation of financial unrest. Otherwise you are doomed to a routine traverse, the kind known to yachtsmen who play with their boats at sea, cruising it is called. Voyaging belongs to seamen and to the wanderers of the world who cannot or will not fit in.

If you are contemplating a voyage and you have the means, abandon the venture until your fortunes change. Only then will you know what the sea is all about. I've always wanted to sail to the South Seas but I can't afford it. What these men can't afford is not to go.

They are enmeshed in the cancerous discipline of security and in the worship of security we fling our lives beneath the wheels of routine and before we know it our lives are gone. What does a man need, really need? A few pounds of food each day, heat and shelter, six feet to lie down in and some form of working activity that will yield a sense of accomplishment.

That's all, in the material sense, and we know it, but we are brainwashed by our economic system until we end up in a tomb beneath a pyramid of time payments, mortgages, preposterous gadgetry, playthings that divert our attention for the sheer idiocy of the charade. The years thunder by. The dreams of youth grow dim where they lie caked in dust on the shelves of patience.

Before we know it, the tomb is sealed. Where then lies the answer? In choice, what shall it be? Bankruptcy of purse or bankruptcy of life? That's all I want to share with you today, but I'll be back soon with you soon to talk about bankruptcy and how to use tumultuous difficult times to move yourself onto a different path.

Take heart, don't despair. I know this sounds trite, I'm aware of that, but I think it's true. One of the things I often encourage myself with when I'm in the middle of financial trouble is simply this. If money can solve my problems, my problems are really in the grand scheme of things not so significant.

There are problems that cannot be solved with money, and those problems are very significant, but money problems in the fullness of time can usually be solved. We'll talk about some techniques and we'll talk about dealing with that as soon as I can go. Got to go work with some clients now.

If you'd like to work with me privately, it's a big focus of mine right now, email me joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com. Use coupon code "MARCHMADNESS" in that email and I'll get you all the details on how to work with me. Joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com. Remember, my course is at radicalpersonalfinance.com/store. If you'd like the practical family preparedness course, do that at radicalpreparedness.com.

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